Elvis Presley - I Just Can't Help Believin'
Mama Cass - Make Your Own Kind Of Music
Just three of the iconic tunes we owe to the husband and wife songwriting partnership of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. He wrote the tunes, she wrote the words. Words such as these...
'Nuff said.
Cynthia Weil passed away on the 1st of June, making a widower of Mann after 62 years of marriage.
They don't write a lot of songs about songwriters, not the ones who don't become stars in their own right, anyway, not the ones who just toil away quietly in the background creating legends.
Then again, Cynthia Weil also wrote the lyrics to this...
...a song that proved particularly influential on one young lad growing up in New Jersey.
"[Hearing The Animals] was a revelation … the first records with full blown class consciousness … the chorus of, ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’ where working stiffs are looking for a better life can be heard in all my albums …That’s every song I’ve ever written. That’s all of them. I’m not kidding either. That’s, ‘Born to Run’, ‘Born in the U.S.A.’"
So what have we got in tribute to Ms. Weil and all those wonderful lyrics she left us? How about this...?
Cynthia, when you pass it seems like this whole town drops
Cynthia, or maybe it's just me, baby, and these fools stuck here punchin' this clock
Well you give us a reason to stop just for a while
Stop, stand and salute your style
