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How Billy Joel Made ‘New York State of Mind’: The Greyhound Ride Home That Became an Anthem
Billy Joel never released New York State of Mind as a single. It charted for nobody, it was promoted by nobody, and the album it came from barely troubled the charts at all. Yet it became the song New York claims as its own — the one played when the city is celebrating, and, more…
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How Bee Gees Made ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart’: The One-Hour Song That Healed the Brothers First
The first thing How Can You Mend a Broken Heart ever mended was the Bee Gees themselves. When Barry and Robin Gibb wrote it in August 1970, the group had effectively ceased to exist: the brothers had split in acrimony the year before, Robin had gone solo, and the most successful British harmony act of…
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How Billie Holiday Made ‘Fine and Mellow’: Her Own Blues, and a Last Duet With Prez
On the afternoon of December 8, 1957, American television showed something it had never quite shown before: Billie Holiday, seated among a circle of ageing swing masters in a CBS studio in New York, singing a blues she had written herself nearly twenty years earlier. The programme was The Sound of Jazz, and the song…
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How Barry White Made ‘I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby’: The Demo That Forced the Producer to Become the Star
Before 1973, Barry White’s plan was to stay invisible. He was a Los Angeles songwriter, producer and arranger who built records for other people and was genuinely uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice — that vast, velvet baritone the world would soon treat as an aphrodisiac. Then he sang three demos at a…
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How Bette Midler Made ‘The Rose’: The 45-Minute Song That Beat 3,000 Others
Amanda McBroom was not trying to write a standard. She was a Los Angeles singer-songwriter and actress whose manager had given her some practical career advice: if she wanted a record deal, she should write some Bob Seger-type tunes — gritty, commercial, rocking. McBroom went away and, in roughly forty-five minutes, produced the opposite of…
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How Barry Manilow Made ‘Can’t Smile Without You’: The Song Three Songwriters Couldn’t Give Away
It opens with a whistle — a soft, unhurried whistle, the sound of a man strolling down a street with somebody on his mind — and then Barry Manilow leans into one of the simplest confessions in pop: he can’t smile, can’t laugh, can’t sing, can’t do anything at all without her. Can’t Smile Without…
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How Barbra Streisand Made ‘Evergreen’: The Melody She Wrote on a Guitar She Was Still Learning to Play
Barbra Streisand was not a songwriter. In 1976 she was the biggest female star in American entertainment — a singer who interpreted other people’s songs better than anyone alive, an Oscar-winning actress, a perfectionist who controlled every inch of her records and films — but the melodies on her albums came from professional composers. Then,…
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How Anne Murray Made ‘Danny’s Song’: The Letter From a Brother That Brought Her Back
Some hit songs are written for the charts. Danny’s Song was written for a brother — a broke, brand-new father who had nothing to give his baby son, and whose younger brother decided that a song would have to do instead. Kenny Loggins wrote it while he was still in high school. He then recorded…
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How Anita Baker Made ‘Caught Up in the Rapture’: The Song That Carried the Album’s Name
Every hit creates a problem for the song that follows it, and in the autumn of 1986 Anita Baker had a beautiful problem. Sweet Love had turned her album Rapture into the slow-burning phenomenon of the year, and now Elektra needed a second single to prove it had not been a fluke. The label did…
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How Bob Marley & The Wailers Made ‘Three Little Birds’: The Windowsill Song Written After the Gunmen Came
The most reassuring song ever put on record — a song so gentle that it is played in hospitals, kindergartens and football stadiums, a song whose entire message is that every little thing is gonna be all right — was written by a man who had recently been shot in his own kitchen. In December…