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How Barry Manilow Turned a Songwriter’s Demo into “Weekend in New England”
Every singer has one song that stops being a song and starts being a memory. For Barry Manilow, it is the slow tide of strings, the lonely piano, and that impossible, aching melody: “Weekend in New England.” Play the opening bars for anyone who came of age in the late seventies and watch their face…
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Elton John: The Heart Behind the Glasses — Husbands, Sons, and Second Chances
He spent the 1970s as the biggest rock star on the planet, the 1980s as a tabloid tragedy, and the 1990s rebuilding himself from the wreckage. But the most remarkable chapter of Elton John’s life didn’t begin until he was in his forties — when he got sober, found the love of his life, and,…
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How Elton John Made “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”: The Disaster in Jamaica That Became a Double Album
It is the most beloved album of Elton John’s career — seventeen songs, two LPs, a string of hits that have never left the radio, and sales in excess of thirty million copies. But “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” almost didn’t happen at all. In January 1973, Elton John flew to Jamaica to record his seventh…
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Whitney Houston: The People Who Loved Her Most
The world called her “The Voice,” and the nickname made her sound like an instrument — perfect, powerful, almost inhuman. But Whitney Houston was a daughter, a best friend, a mother, a mentor, and a benefactor before she was ever a phenomenon. Behind the seven consecutive number ones and the diamond records, there was a…
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How Whitney Houston Made “The Preacher’s Wife”: The Gospel Album That Made History
By 1996, Whitney Houston had conquered everything. She had the best-selling debut, the seven consecutive number ones, the biggest single by a woman in history, the biggest soundtrack of all time. She had nothing left to prove to the pop world — so she went home. “The Preacher’s Wife” wasn’t just another movie soundtrack. It…
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Tina Turner: The Heart Behind the Hits — Love, Faith, and the Family She Fought For
The world knew Tina Turner as a force of nature — the legs, the voice, the hair, the survivor who came back bigger than ever. But the woman behind the legend was shaped by quieter things: a chant she whispered to herself in the darkest years, a love that arrived when she had stopped looking…
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The Night Tina Turner Sang to 180,000 People: Rio de Janeiro, January 16, 1988
Twelve years earlier, she had run across a Texas highway in the dark with thirty-six cents in her pocket. On January 16, 1988, Tina Turner walked onto the stage of the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro and looked out at the largest paying audience any solo artist had ever drawn — some 180,000 people,…
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Stevie Wonder: The Heart Behind the Genius — Nine Children, Three Marriages, One Extraordinary Family
The world knows Stevie Wonder as a genius — the blind prodigy who remade popular music in his own image. But behind the twenty-five Grammys and the fifty years of hits, there is another Stevie Wonder: a man who has been married three times, fathered nine children with five women, and built one of the…
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How Stevie Wonder Made “Songs in the Key of Life”: The Album He Almost Walked Away From
It is the most celebrated album of Stevie Wonder’s career — a double LP plus a bonus EP, twenty-one songs, nearly two hours of music, and a run of hits that defined the 1970s. But “Songs in the Key of Life” almost never happened. In 1975, at the height of his powers, Stevie Wonder seriously…
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Prince: The Private Man Behind the Purple Myth
He was the most flamboyant performer of his generation and the most private man in pop music — a combination that shouldn’t have been possible, and yet Prince pulled it off for nearly forty years. On stage, he wore lace and lamé and sang about things that made censors blush. Off stage, he lived in…