Neil Sedaka (86) was born on March 13, 1939 in Brooklyn New York. His father, Mordechai “Mac” Sedaka, was a taxi driver of Lebanese Jewish descent. Sedaka’s paternal grandparents came to the United States from Istanbul in 1910. The family name was derived from “tzedakah”, Hebrew for charity. Sedaka’s mother, Eleanor (née Appel), was an Ashkenazi Jew of Polish and Russian descent. He grew up in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he lived across the street from Neil Diamond and dated Carole King. “We all lived in Brooklyn,” he said. “It was a wonderful time. It must have been something in the egg cream. We used to hang out in the sweet shop and have egg creams and potato knishes.”
His second grade teacher sent a note home suggesting he take piano lessons and his mother took a part-time job in an Abraham & Straus department store for six months to pay for a second-hand upright piano. That’s what you call supportive!
In 1947, not yet 8 years old, he auditioned successfully for a piano scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music’s Preparatory Division for Children, which he attended on Saturdays. His mother had wanted him to become a classical pianist like his contemporary, Van Cliburn, and Sedaka continued to show fondness and talent for classical music throughout his life, but to his mother’s dismay, Sedaka was also discovering pop music. She eventually acquiesced when Sedaka received a five-figure royalty check for his hit “Calendar Girl” in 1961. When Sedaka was 13, a neighbor heard him playing and introduced him to her 16-year-old son, Howard Greenfield, an aspiring poet and lyricist. They became two of New York’s Brill Building’s composers.
Sedaka and Greenfield wrote songs together throughout much of their young lives. Before rock and roll became popular, Sedaka and Greenfield found inspiration from show tunes. When Sedaka became a major teen pop star, the pair continued writing hits for Sedaka and numerous other artists.
After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School, Sedaka and some of his classmates formed a band called the Linc-Tones. The band had minor regional hits with songs like “While I Dream”, “I Love My Baby”, “Come Back, Joe”, and “Don’t Go”, before Sedaka launched his solo career and left the group in 1957.
After this short-lived tenure as a founding member of what later would become the doo-wop group the Tokens, Sedaka’s first three solo singles, “Laura Lee”, “Ring-a-Rockin'”, and “Oh, Delilah!” failed to become hits (although “Ring-a-Rockin'” earned him the first of many appearances on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand), but they demonstrated his ability to perform as a solo act and Sedaka was signed to a recording contract with RCA Victor.
Sedaka’s first single for RCA Victor, “The Diary”, was inspired by Connie Francis, one of Sedaka and Greenfield’s most important clients, while the three were taking a temporary break during their idea-making for a new song. Francis was writing in her diary, Sedaka asked if he could read it, and Connie said no. After Little Anthony and the Imperials passed on the song, Sedaka recorded it himself, and his debut single hit the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 14 in 1958.
His second single, a novelty tune titled “I Go Ape”, just missed the top 40, peaking at No. 42, but it became a more successful single in the United Kingdom at No. 9. The third single, “Crying My Heart Out for You”, was a commercial failure, missing the Hot 100 entirely, peaking at No. 111 but reaching No. 6 on the pop charts in Italy. RCA Victor had lost money on “I Go Ape” and “Crying My Heart Out for You” and was ready to drop Sedaka; Sedaka feared he was headed for one-hit wonder status. His manager, Al Nevins, persuaded the RCA Victor executives to give him one more chance.
Sedaka then did something interesting. He bought the three biggest hit singles of the time and listened to them repeatedly, studying the song structure, chord progressions, lyrics, and harmonies before writing his next songs “Oh! Carol”, his first domestic top 10 hit, reaching No. 9 on the Hot 100 in 1959 and going to No. 1 on the Italian pop charts in 1960, giving Sedaka his first No. 1 ranking. In the UK, the song spent a total of 17 weeks in the top 40, peaking at No. 3 for four weeks. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Neil Sedaka wrote the songs he sang too, which made him a cut above.
Sedaka wrote many more hits from 1960 to 1962. His flow of top 30 hits during this period included: “Stairway to Heaven” (No. 9, 1960); “You Mean Everything to Me” (No. 17, 1960); “Run Samson Run” (No. 27, 1960); “Calendar Girl” (No. 4, 1961; also reached No. 1 on the Japanese and Canadian pop charts); “Little Devil” (No. 11, 1961); “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” (No. 6, 1961); his signature song, “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” (No. 1, two weeks: August 11 and 18, 1962); and “Next Door to an Angel” (No. 5, 1962).
His popularity declined with the Beatles and the British Invasion taking over in the US by the mid-1960s. In 1970 he moved to the UK and a chance encounter with Elton John in 1973 resulted in a three album contact with Elton John’s record company. His recording career was temporarily revived in the mid-1970s, solidified by the 1975 U.S. Billboard Hot 100 number ones “Laughter in the Rain” and “Bad Blood”. Sedaka maintained a successful career as a songwriter, penning hits for other artists including “Stupid Cupid” (Connie Francis), “(Is This the Way to) Amarillo” (Tony Christie), and “Love Will Keep Us Together” (Captain & Tennille). Although Sedaka’s stature as a recording artist was at a low ebb in the late 1960s, he was able to maintain his career through songwriting and session pianist for other artists
Sedaka also contributed some work as a session pianist during his heyday as a pop singer-songwriter. His piano playing is heard on “Dream Lover”, Bobby Darin’s 1959 hit.
Now most of the pre-Beatle acts were wiped out. And it looked for a long while that Neil Sedaka was ancient history too. Carole King emerged from the background to become a piano player in James Taylor’s band, and then a superstar as a solo act with the best-selling “Tapestry.” But she was an anomaly, the Brill Building was in the rearview mirror.
And then…
Elton John is passionate about not only his music, but that of others. He’s a student of the game, he’s embedded in the scene, even as it changes. Elton John signed Neil Sedaka to his Rocket Records and the result was two number one records. Neil was back! He was on all the music television shows of the era. He looked like he’d jetted right in from the fifties, he didn’t glam up, he might wear a sweater, but basically he appeared the same as he ever was.
But that was good enough, because he was great.
I mean if you can sing, write and play….
But then, as a sign (curse) of the times, Neil bit the hand that fed him. He thought Elton needed to pay him more money. And the resulting rift led him to leave the label and ultimately have no more hits.
And Neil regretted this. But such is the music business, you’re almost always flying blind, you don’t know whether your decisions are the proper ones. And in truth, musicians have been ripped-off from time immemorial. And in Sedaka’s earlier era, this was truly prevalent. But let this be a lesson to you, to be willing to leave some money on the table. If you’re greedy, oftentimes you’re left out.
So Neil never had another hit, but… He’d made it again in the modern era, people knew who he was, he was never forgotten, he was part of the firmament. He wasn’t just a feature in the Dead Sea Scrolls of the pre-Beatle era, he’d earned his rep, people knew who he was and knew his hits and…Of course he wrote “Love Will Keep Us Together,” a gigantic hit for Captain & Tennille in 1975 and…
Of course, music evolves, but melody, harmony and changes are forever. But too many acts are too hip for the room today.
But Neil could do all that, as well as croon with the best of them. Used to be you had to have a good voice to have a hit, to even get a chance to record, whereas today those with imperfect vocalizations believe they’re entitled to number one records, or at least riches.
Our standards have been lowered. Everybody used to try to make it in music back in the day, but very few felt they deserved success. And those who broke through were icons.
Now Neil Sedaka lived to 86. Not a bad run. And he leaves behind all those records, but his personality, his vivacity, those have been extinguished. Neil was always smiling, always upbeat, he always had his head in the game. Sure, he believed in himself, you have to to make it. The stars are different from you and me. But Neil was both a star and human, on stage but relatable. Like us but not like us.
And his humanity and his truth shined through.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983 and continued to perform, including in a series of mini-concerts on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, until his death from cardiovascular issues on February 27, 2026.
