By Cory Franklin

June 15, 2023

The music scene changes rapidly, so it’s hard to write about long-ago songwriters unfamiliar to many readers. Do you know the song, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”? In 1999 the performing-rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) ranked it as the most-played song on American radio and television in the 20th century, with more than 8 million airplays by 1999.

How about the song, “We ‘Gotta Get Out of This Place”?  Bruce Springsteen once said of it, “That’s every song I’ve ever written. That’s all of them. I’m not kidding, either. That’s ‘Born to Run’, ‘Born in the USA’.”

Those songs were written by the great 1960s songwriting duo of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil Ms. Weil died recently, and while you may not know her name you certainly know many of the songs that she cowrote with Mr. Mann, who was also her husband.

The couple wrote for four decades but their sweet spot was the early/mid 1960s, as part of “Brill Building sound,” the Tin Pan Alley of early rock and roll, staffed by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neal Sedaka, Neil Diamond and other great composers. (Technically, they worked out of 1650 Broadway in Manhattan, a neighboring building to the actual Brill Building.)

It is hard to distill the Weil/Mann catalog into ten songs, but I’m going to give you what I think are the ten best. Here are some of the songs that didn’t make the list and if you’re too young to remember, every one of those is a top-notch song: “Uptown” (The Crystals), “Saturday Night at the Movies” (The Drifters), “Hungry” (Paul Revere and the Raiders), “I Just Can’t Help Believing” (B.J. Thomas), “Soul and Inspiration” (Righteous Brothers), “Somewhere Out There” (Linda Ronstadt/James Ingram). On her own, Cynthia Weil also wrote “He’s So Shy” (Pointer Sisters), “Running with the Night” (Lionel Richie) and the “Love Theme From St. Elmo’s Fire.”

Some of my top ten you may have never heard before and no other list published since her death has mentioned many of them (including my #1). But that’s OK, if you click them on, you won’t be disappointed. In ascending order, here are the ten best from Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann:

DO NOT READ THIS WITHOUT CLICKING ON THE LINKS

10. “Here You Come Again” (Dolly Parton)

The only song on this list written outside the 1960s, recorded by Dolly Parton in 1978. It marked a key transition in her career from country music to pop artist (she made sure the arrangement was still country flavored.)  The song topped the Country charts and reached #3 on the Pop Singles chart. This earned Dolly a Grammy for Best Country Female Vocal Performance and testified to Cynthia Weil’s songwriting versatility.

9. “I Want You to Meet My Baby”(Eydie Gorme) 

Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, aka “Steve and Eydie”, were the husband and wife recording stars who starred on television and in Las Vegas for 40 years (real names Sidney Liebowitz and Edith Gormezano).  They were a little square, their main demographic was adults in the middle-of -the-road market, but both had pop hits. Eydie was the more talented and better singer and had a solo million-seller written by Mann and Weil during the bossa nova craze in 1963, Blame it on the Bossa Nova (Astrud Gilberto, who sang “The Girl from Ipanema” in 1963 also died recently). A year later Mann and Weil wrote “I Want You To Meet My Baby” for Eydie. It had a ska beat, which was new in rock and roll in 1964 and presaged reggae.  A great song, most people have never heard it because it was buried during The Beatles first wave in America.  Listen to it and you’ll wonder why Eydie didn’t do more records like this.

8. “Magic Town”(Vogues) 

Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, aka “Steve and Eydie”, were the husband and wife recording stars who starred on television and in Las Vegas for 40 years (real names Sidney Liebowitz and Edith Gormezano).  They were a little square, their main demographic was adults in the middle-of -the-road market, but both had pop hits. Eydie was the more talented and better singer and had a solo million-seller written by Mann and Weil during the bossa nova craze in 1963, Blame it on the Bossa Nova (Astrud Gilberto, who sang “The Girl from Ipanema” in 1963 also died recently). A year later Mann and Weil wrote “I Want You To Meet My Baby” for Eydie. It had a ska beat, which was new in rock and roll in 1964 and presaged reggae.  A great song, most people have never heard it because it was buried during The Beatles first wave in America.  Listen to it and you’ll wonder why Eydie didn’t do more records like this.

 

7. “On Broadway” (The Drifters, George Benson)

A collaboration between Weil/Mann and the legendary Brill Building team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who wrote for Elvis and the Coasters. The guitar solo in the middle is played by Phil Spector. Cynthia said, “It was about a girl coming to New York and dreaming of Broadway and stardom. It was much more kind of escape from a small town and I’m going to make it. When we met with Jerry and Mike and played this for them, they said, you know, we’re doing The Drifters, so it would need a whole other perspective. You can go home and do it yourself, or you can write it with us. And these guys were our idols. We thought they were great and it would be a fantastic opportunity to work with them. So, we ended up reworking the song together.” The Drifters version is definitive, George Benson’s 1978 version is close.

 

6. “Kicks”(Paul Revere and the Raiders)

Cynthia Weil called this the “ultimate high school garage band song.” It was also the first anti-drug song, which Weil and Mann wrote about their friend and songwriting rival Gerry Goffin, Carole King’s husband and writing partner. Killer opening riff.

 

5. “My Dad” (Paul Petersen)

Paul Petersen played Donna Reed’s son on the long-running Donna Reed Show on television. On a 1962 episode of the show, he introduced this Weil/Mann tribute to fatherhood. If there is a better Father’s Day song, I have yet to hear it. Watch the video – it speaks to the talent of the songwriters and the performers.

 

4. “Walking in the Rain”(Ronettes, Jay and the Americans)

Ronnie Spector absolutely nails the song (she did it in one take). If it wasn’t for “Be My Baby” (written by another Brill Building songwriting duo, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich), this would be Ronnie’s signature tune. Jay Black, who had one of the best voices in 1960’s rock, also does a great version on the remake by Jay and the Americans.

 

3. “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”(Righteous Brothers)

This is Mann and Weil’s masterpiece, often called the greatest rock and roll recording ever made. It has won virtually every award in the music industry – deservedly so. So why is only #3 on this list? It is the epitome of songwriting but some of its greatness lies in the Phil Specter “wall of sound” production, the pinnacle of his career that gives the record its primacy. Other versions by Dionne Warwick, Roberta Flack and Donnie Hathaway, and John Hall and Darryl Oates are good, but this song belongs to Specter and The Righteous Brothers.

 

2. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”(The Animals)

It’s a toss-up between this and “Loving Feeling” for #2 spot. I’d rate this just ahead because, besides being a great song, it is culturally significant in ways “Loving Feeling” is not. The early demo version was a song about a couple trying to escape the inner city-tenements. It made its way to England and with a great bass intro by Chas Chandler (who introduced Jimi Hendrix to the UK) and the primal voice of Eric Burdon, it became a song about escaping the mills and factories of Northern England. Coming as it did in 1965, it quickly evolved from a song about escaping poverty into the disaffected American grunts’ iconic anthem in Vietnam.

 

1. “Shape of Things to Come” (Max Frost and the Troopers)

I know what you are thinking. How did a two-minute song you’ve probably never heard, that never cracked the top 20, from a cheesy obscure 1968 movie (Wild in the Streets), done by a fictional group, top this list ahead of the iconic “Loving Feeling” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”?

Good question. But take a listen to the haunting melody – part garage rock, part psychedelic – with unquestionably the best lyrics Mann/Weil ever wrote that include an homage to the poet John Donne. The lyrics are as relevant today as they were then – maybe even more so. When you hear it, you will see how good it is.

Songwriting in the mid 1960’s was a craft and Weil and Mann were among the best at it. Listen to these songs, and you will begin to appreciate what a talent Cynthia Weil was.

 

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About Dr. Cory Franklin. Cory Franklin is frequent and valued contributor here at johnkassnews.com.

He is a doctor who was director of medical intensive care at Cook County Hospital in Chicago for over 25 years. An editorial board contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page, he writes freelance medical and non-medical articles.

His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Jerusalem Post, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Post, Guardian, Washington Post and has been excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Cory was also Harrison Ford’s technical adviser and one of the role models for the character Ford played in the 1993 movie, “The Fugitive.” His YouTube podcast Rememberingthepassed has received 900,000 hits to date.

 He published Chicago Flashbulbs in 2013, Cook County ICU: 30 Years Of Unforgettable Patients And Odd Cases in 2015, and most recently coauthored, A Guide to Writing College Admission Essays: Practical Advice for Students and Parents in 2021.

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