Cynthia Weil biography

Synopsis

Writing Songs in New York City

Songwriter. Born October 18, 1940, in New York City and raised on the Upper West Side, Cynthia Weil began her long and prolific songwriting career when she was in her early 20s. She started out working at Frank Loesser's music publishing company, but her remarkable ability to pen lyrics that went to the core of human emotion and experience eventually led her to Aldon Music. Aldon, a company whose name is a blend of its cofounders, Al Nevins and Don Kirshner, was a hot spot of songwriting in the early 1960s, producing hits that have since been proven to have decades-long staying power. Weil joined a team of fellow greats nicknamed the "Brill Building Writers," joining Carole King, Gerry Golfin, Neil Sedaka, Phil Spector, Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller, and Howie Greenfield in challenging convention while taking pop music to new heights.

For Cynthia Weil, though, the most important songwriter in the Brill Building was Barry Mann, an immensely talented composer. The two became a songwriting team in 1960 and soon began churning out hits at the same time as their professional partnership became personal. Weil later remembered that an instant crush on Mann was actually the reason she joined Aldon Music: "While I was writing with Teddy, Barry came up with Harry Greenfield to play him a song. So I said, 'So who's the cute guy?' I asked who he was, and if he had a girlfriend and the whole thing. Judy Tannen, who was the receptionist there, said, 'Well he writes for a friend of mine named Don Kirshner. So why don't you go up there and maybe you'll see him and get him to ask you out.' I went up there, actually stalking Barry, and ended up with a career. But it all begins with lust!"

1960s Pop and Rock Hits

By 1961, the pair's relationship had blossomed into full-blown romance and they married in August of that year. The couple continued working at Aldon Music, writing hit after hit in the heady, chaotic and creative environment of the Brill Building: "It was kind of like songwriter's boot camp. You had to produce. You had to produce fast. You had to learn. You made a lot of mistakes, and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process." Their best friends and biggest competitors were Gerry Golfin and Carole King, another husband-wife songwriting team at Aldon. Mann and Weil would go on to enjoy one of the most successful songwriting careers in history; the two are said to be responsible for the sale of 200 million records worldwide.

Mann and Weil enjoyed huge success through the 1960s, writing smash singles such as "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" for The Animals, "Uptown" for The Crystals, "On Broadway" for The Drifters, and "Walking in the Rain" for The Ronettes.