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The Untold Story of Neil Diamond: The Brooklyn Kid Who Gave Away a Fortune in Hits
Before Neil Diamond was the sequined showman of the Greek Theatre, before “Sweet Caroline” became the most joyful singalong in sports stadiums around the world, he was a pre-med student at NYU who could barely afford to eat. The road from a fencing scholarship to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ran through some…
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The Untold Story of Barry Manilow: The Jingle King Who Conquered the World
Long before the sequined jackets and the sold-out arenas, before the Las Vegas marquees and the millions of devoted “Fanilows,” Barry Manilow was a starving kid from Brooklyn with a piano, a stack of other people’s lyrics, and fifteen seconds to make America remember a melody forever. The story of how he got from a…
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The Untold Story of Elton John: The Pub Pianist Who Became a Rocket Man
Before the feathers and the sequins, before the stadium tours and the knighthood, he was Reggie — a shy teenager playing standards in a pub four nights a week, wearing glasses he didn’t need to imitate a dead rock and roller. Elton John’s transformation into one of the best-selling artists of all time is the…
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The Untold Story of Whitney Houston: The Voice That Carried Too Much
They called her “The Voice,” and for once the nickname wasn’t hype — it was a simple statement of fact. Whitney Houston possessed an instrument so powerful, so precise, so seemingly effortless that it reset what people thought a human being could do with a song. She broke records that still stand, turned the national…
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The Untold Story of Tina Turner: 36 Cents and a Dream
She is the only artist in history to have hit the Top 40 in six consecutive decades. She walked away from an abusive marriage with 36 cents and a gas card, rebuilt herself from nothing in her forties, and became bigger than she had ever been. Tina Turner didn’t just survive the music business —…
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The Untold Story of Stevie Wonder: The Boy Who Turned Darkness Into Light
He has been called a genius so often that the word has gone a little numb — but in Stevie Wonder’s case, it was never hype. It was a job description. Blind from infancy, signed to Motown at eleven, a chart-topper at thirteen, and the architect of one of the greatest creative runs in popular…
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The Untold Story of Prince: The Genius Who Refused to Be Owned
He arrived in the late 1970s as a shy teenager from Minneapolis with an afro, a falsetto that could shatter glass, and a demand no record label had ever heard from an unknown kid: let me do everything myself. They laughed, then they said yes, and music was never the same again. Prince Rogers Nelson…
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The Untold Story of Michael Jackson: The Boy Who Invented the Future of Pop — and Paid for It
No one in the history of popular music bent the culture further, faster, than Michael Jackson. In the span of about eighteen months — from the release of “Billie Jean” to the night his hair caught fire on a Pepsi set — he went from famous to mythological: the biggest-selling album ever made, a dance…
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The Untold Story of Marvin Gaye: The Prince Who Defied Motown, Exiled Himself to Belgium, and Died at His Father’s Hand
Marvin Gaye had the smoothest voice in soul music and the stormiest life behind it. They called him the Prince of Motown, and for a while he wore the crown beautifully — velvet suits, duets with the loveliest voice in Detroit, a string of hits that seemed effortless. But beneath the polish was a man…
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The Untold Story of Madonna: The Girl With $35 Who Declared War on Boredom
No one in pop history has been underestimated more often, or proven the doubters wrong more spectacularly, than Madonna Louise Ciccone. She arrived in New York with $35 in her pocket, no connections, and a ferocious certainty that she was going to be somebody. Four decades later she is the best-selling female recording artist of…