Neil Sedaka Biography

Beginning as a classically trained pianist at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School, Sedaka soon drifted towards popular music.

Sedaka was to become one of the most archetypal of the legendary ‘Brill Building’ songwriters of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In his early career, Sedaka sang with the New York doo-wop group 'The Tokens', who later went on to fame with ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonite’.

However, most of his songwriting was the result of collaboration with his partner, Howard Greenfield, within the famous Brill Building.

Their first real songwriting success was with ‘Stupid Cupid’, recorded and made a hit by Connie Francis in 1958.

However, Sedaka was unique amongst the Brill Building Crowd for actually singing his own material.

He signed to RCA in the late 1950s as a solo artist. His biggest hits for himself included 'Oh Carol', written about his long-term Brooklyn friend and fellow Brill Building singer-songwriter Carol King. There was also 'The Diary', 'Calendar Girl', 'Next Door to an Angel' and, perhaps most famously of all, 'Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen'.

Sedaka’s most enduring and well-known tune, however, remains 'Breaking Up is Hard to Do', which reached number 1 in 1962.

Partly to compensate for his high-pitched, reedy voice, Sedaka became a pioneer of vocal multi-tracking, which was later to become a widely used practice.

As the British Invasion of the 'Beatles' and the 'Rolling Stones' took the US by storm, the Brill Building sound of Sedaka was relegated, and he fell out of favour. Having occasional successes with Greenfield throughout the 1960s, it wasn’t until the early 1970s that his comeback finally happened.

Albums such as 'Solitaire' and 'Emergence' found him a renewed audience, especially in England, and he hit number one in 1974 with the song ‘Laughter in the Rain', followed by 'Love Will Keep Us Together', again with Greenfield.

Teaming up with artists such as Elton John, Sedaka found himself a solid audience throughout the eighties and nineties.