Barry Manilow Biography

One of the biggest stars of adult contemporary pop in the 1970s, singer and piano player Barry Manilow racked up than two dozen romantic and rollicking hits between 1974 and 1983.

Barry Manilow attended the Julliard School of Music and then began working in New York clubs as a pianist (and later music director) for brassy singer Bette Midler. Manilow’s first hit single, “Mandy,” was #1 on the charts in 1974; it was the first of a string of two dozen hit singles, including “Weekend In New England,” “Copacabana,” “I Write the Songs” and “Can’t Smile Without You.”

Critics claimed Manilow was excessively sentimental or even schmaltzy — the very same traits his fans loved. He continued to tour and record throughout the 1980s and 1990s, though without the vast success of his first decade as a solo artist. His career took an upturn in 2002 after the release of a greatest hits compilation, and in 2005 Barry Manilow began a long-running stage show, “Music and Passion,” at the Las Vegas Hilton (later the Las Vegas Hotel).

He won a 2006 Emmy for a primetime TV special, Barry Manilow: Music and Passion, and released an album of re-worked standards, The Greatest Songs of the Fifties. The record was his biggest hit in nearly two decades, and he followed up with later Greatest Songs albums for the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. He also returned to his roots with This Is My Town: Songs of New York in 2017.