Cynthia Weil, one of many main pop songwriters related to the Brill Constructing sound of the early Sixties, died Thursday at her dwelling in Beverly Hills. She was 82.
Her daughter, Dr. Jenn Mann, confirmed Weil’s loss of life. No reason for loss of life was given.
Weil spent almost 4 a long time writing hit singles that spanned quite a lot of genres, lots of which changed into enduring requirements. Most of those songs have been written in partnership with Barry Mann, the man songwriter Weil married in 1961, who was at her bedside when she died.
Jenn Mann wrote in an announcement to The Instances, “When individuals think about Cynthia Weil they see the mega-hits she wrote with my father, the Grammys she received, being inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame and the Songwriter’s Corridor of Fame and her life portrait within the Carole King musical ‘Lovely.’ We keep in mind the unbelievable loving spouse, mom, grandmother and mother-in-law she was. She was powerful, sensible, humorous, fiercely loyal and delightful.”
Cynthia Weil, clockwise from left, Carole King and Barry Mann on July 18, 1959, in New York.
(Donaldson Assortment/Getty Pictures)
With Mann composing the music and Weil penning lyrics, the pair wrote songs that helped form the sound and sensibility of the Sixties and past. The duo, working principally a couple of blocks from the precise Brill Constructing, at 1650 Broadway, was liable for girl-group classics such because the Crystals’ ”He’s Certain the Boy I Love” and the Ronettes’ ”Strolling within the Rain,” the graceful uptown R&B of the Drifters’ ”On Broadway,” the Righteous Brothers’ operatic “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feelin’” and “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration” and the baroque pop of Cass Elliot’s “Make Your Personal Sort of Music.” Not like a few of their friends, Weil and Mann had a knack for harder-edged materials as nicely, as heard on the Animals’ ”We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place” and Paul Revere & the Raiders’ ”Kicks” and “Hungry.”
Weil and Mann additionally managed to outlive the transition from the ’60s to the ’70s with relative ease, gravitating towards adult-oriented pop. In 1977, they gave Dolly Parton her first crossover pop hit within the type of the ebullient “Right here You Come Once more,” kickstarting a second golden age for the songwriting group that featured such soft-rock hits as Quincy Jones and James Ingram’s “Simply As soon as,” Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville’s “Don’t Know A lot” and Sergio Mendes’ “By no means Gonna Let You Go.” The interval culminated with “Someplace Out There,” a Ronstadt and Ingram duet that received the Grammy for track of the yr in 1988.
Throughout this era, Weil stepped away from Mann to co-write “He’s So Shy” for the Pointer Sisters and “Operating With the Evening” with Lionel Richie.
On Fb, Brill Constructing-era peer and longtime buddy Carole King wrote, “Cynthia’s excessive skilled normal made us higher songwriters.”
Barry Mann wrote in an announcement, “I’m a fortunate man. I had two for one: my spouse and one of many biggest songwriters on this planet, my soul and inspiration.”
The daughter of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants, Cynthia Weil was born on Oct. 18, 1940, in New York Metropolis. Raised on the Higher West Aspect, Weil harbored desires of working within the theater when she was an grownup. Initially skilled as an actress and dancer, Weil gravitated towards music. After supporting herself in faculty by singing showtunes in nightclubs, she wound up on the publishing firm owned by Broadway songwriter Frank Loesser. After a stint with Loesser’s group, she was employed as a workers author at Al Nevins and Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music, a writer housed at 1650 Broadway, only a quick distance from Instances Sq..
Aldon Music was considered one of many publishing homes whose output shaped “the Brill Constructing sound,” a time period used as shorthand for the subtle pop and R&B tunes crafted by skilled songwriters working at places of work scattered alongside Broadway. Collectively, this scene was the incubator for among the biggest songwriting abilities of the postwar period. Amongst Weil’s friends have been King and Gerry Goffin, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, Shadow Morton, Otis Blackwell, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, plus Barry Mann, an Aldon staffer who had a High 10 hit as a performer with “Who Put the Bomp (within the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp).” Weil was collaborating with Teddy Randazzo when Mann performed a track for his colleague; she later mentioned, “I noticed him and it was throughout for me.” Weil and Mann developed knowledgeable relationship that rapidly turned romantic; they married in 1961.
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil circa 1965.
(Michael Ochs Archives)
At first, Weil and Mann cut up their time between writing for teen idols, TV actors with singing aspirations and R&B vocalists, honing chops they deployed on the girl-group classics they wrote for producer Phil Spector. Weil later informed NPR’s Terry Gross, “I someway felt that my girl-group lyrics — aside from ‘Strolling within the Rain,’ which was actually adolescent — they have been just a bit sharper.” Weil’s growing lyrical acumen spurred her to deal with extra severe topics, akin to on “Solely in America,” a civil-rights protest track meant for the Drifters however launched by Jay & the Individuals as a result of co-writer Jerry Leiber satisfied the duo that radio would by no means play the track if it was sung by a Black group.
Weil and Mann’s growing sophistication as composers may very well be heard on “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feelin’,” a stately ballad that blended melodramatic pop and easy soul. The mixture of Spector’s thundering manufacturing and the Righteous Brothers’ passionate efficiency turned “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feelin’” right into a crossover hit in early 1965, however the track would outlast its period. Quite a few covers adopted, together with variations by Dionne Warwick and Daryl Corridor & John Oates, whereas the unique Righteous Brothers single reentered the charts in 1990 after its look within the film “Ghost.” The music publishing group BMI named “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feelin’” because the track that was performed most frequently on American radio and tv in the course of the twentieth century.
Weil and Mann continued to jot down for the Righteous Brothers, the Drifters and the Ronettes by the mid-’60s, however in addition they branched out into tougher rock ’n’ roll starting with “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” a tense hit from British Invasion band the Animals in 1965. “Kicks” and “Hungry,” the pair of High 10 hits they penned for Paul Revere & the Raiders in 1966, have been the fruits of this pattern. By the top of the ’60s, they have been writing gentler, folk-tinged numbers and, with B.J. Thomas’ “I Simply Can’t Assist Believing,” transferring towards the adult-oriented comfortable rock that grew to become their signature within the following a long time.
The pair labored steadily all through the Nineteen Seventies, having the occasional sizable hit like Thomas’ “Rock and Roll Lullaby” in 1972, but it surely was Parton’s “Right here You Come Once more” that revived their fortunes in 1977. The pop track helped push open the door to a rustic viewers they started courting with Johnny Rodriguez’s 1974 nation hit “We’re Over,” but Weil and Mann additionally cultivated a quiet-storm R&B viewers, writing hits for Quincy Jones and James Ingram (“Simply As soon as”) and Deniece Williams (“Black Butterfly”). Weil pursued this path when she wrote songs individually from Mann within the early ’80s. Working with Tom Snow, she had hits with the Pointer Sisters (“He’s So Shy”) and Peabo Bryson (“If Ever You’re In My Arms Once more”), and collaborated with Richie on his hit “Operating With the Evening.”
Weil and Mann teamed with movie composer James Horner to jot down the ballad “Someplace Out There” for the 1986 animated movie “An American Tail.” As carried out by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram, “Someplace Out There” grew to become a serious hit, garnering Grammys for track of the yr and track written particularly for a movement image or tv; it was nominated for authentic track on the Academy Awards. The success of “Someplace Out There” led to Weil and Mann working recurrently in movement footage. They reunited with Horner for “No matter You Think about” from the 1994 fantasy movie “The Pagemaster,” wrote the songs for Ron Howard’s 2000 live-action adaptation of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” and collaborated with John Williams on “For All the time,” a track from Steven Spielberg’s 2001 movie, “A.I.”
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil on the 57th Grammy Awards in 2015.
(Jordan Strauss / Invision/AP)
Weil and Mann began to retreat from the pop charts within the Nineties. Weil wrote Vanessa Williams’ “Only for Tonight” with Keith Thomas in 1992, then had her final charting hit when “Mistaken Once more,” a track she wrote with Tommy Lee James, grew to become a No. 1 nation hit for Martina McBride in 1998. Hanson’s 1997 “I Will Come to You” was the final charting pop hit she co-wrote with Mann.
In lieu of pop hits, Weil pursued different inventive retailers. Mann and Weil opened “They Wrote That?,” a stage manufacturing wherein Weil informed tales whereas Mann sang tunes from the couple’s songbook, in New York Metropolis in 2004. The pair wrote music for a 2008 stage adaptation of Peter Bogdanovich’s movie “Masks.” Weil and Mann additionally each wound up as characters in “Lovely: The Carole King Musical,” which debuted on Broadway in 2014.
Weil launched a parallel profession as an creator within the 2010s with “Rockin’ Infants,” a youngsters’s e-book written together with her daughter, Jenn. She wrote two extra novels, in addition to the script for the 2006 Lifetime thriller “The Stranger Recreation.”
Weil was inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 1987. She obtained the Ahmet Ertegun Award from the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame in 2010.
Weil is survived by her husband, Barry; daughter Jenn; and grandchildren Quin and Mendez Berman.
