He Didn’t Write the Songs, but Barry Manilow Made A Generation Believe He Did (We Still Do)

By Joey Salgado

Sidelined for a few days by flu and unable to perform the demanding physical exertions of playing a record (get up from chair, pull out a record from shelf, put record on platter, clean record with a soft brush, drop the needle, walk back to chair, stand and flip the record, repeat), I found myself scrolling on Apple Music, looking for an artist who can soothe aching joints and the dark, brooding disposition that a body temperature above 38 degrees can bring. Then it hit me like a full orchestral ending. A name that brings placid memories of easy Sundays waking up late to the smell of my mother’s nilagang baka on the stove: Barry Manilow.

Before my classic rock purist friends start side-eyeing me at my next record store visit, let me get this out of the way. I like Barry Manilow. I don’t hide it, never apologized for it. Not a closeted Manilow fan but an open, shameless, flaming one, even when he stopped making hits and began wearing rhinestone jumpsuits on stage, dancing the merengue and cha-cha while singing about Lola the showgirl.

This I declare with the same conviction of a man who owns a Bob Ludwig “loud cut” of Led Zeppelin II and an original pressing of Juan De La Cruz Band’s self-titled debut album. I have ample room in my heart and in my record shelf for this Brooklyn-born piano man and former jingle writer who never wrote the songs he made famous. He used to make young girls cry. Now he makes elderly women weep.

Manilow is now 82, his face resembling porcelain. In 2025 he was diagnosed with Stage 1 lung cancer. He underwent surgery, released a new song (“Once Before I Go”), announced a new album out in June, and is scheduled to begin a Las Vegas residency in May.

Looks like he made it.

It’s funny to think that Manilow’s first hit song, “Mandy,” was also the name of a topless blond woman on a knock-off adult magazine left carelessly, tsk tsk, by a neighbor on their living room coffee table on a hot summer afternoon, said magazine finding its way to my bedroom (it’s a miracle!). You can say Manilow’s “Mandy” touched me at the same time I was touched by the spirit of rock and roll.

By the mid-70s, Manilow was already becoming a phenomenon. There were other singers in the same sad, suffering man mold (David Pomeranz, Dan Hill, and Ronnie Milsap come to mind) but Manilow was the only artist whose songs occupied the top of the American charts with such dominance that they even wrote a parody song about him. “I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow,” released in 1979 by Ray Stevens, even copied the album cover of Barry Manilow II. According to Wikipedia, the song spent eight weeks on Billboard’s Top 100.

Why Manilow? Because like all of you, ako’y Pinoy. And we have always had a particular tenderness for the well-crafted ballad. It’s a cultural thing, say the experts, “hugot” before the term “hugot” was invented, where we don’t say “I’m hurting” out loud but sing it instead, the ascent of videoke making it communal, sharing the torment with friends and strangers who never asked to be tormented.

I never stopped listening to classic Manilow, or The Essentials as Apple Music classified hits by artists, even when the likes of Boston, The Eagles, Foreigner, Ram Jam, and Fleetwood Mac invaded my bedroom, through my conversion to the Pinoy Rock congregation, and consciously and obsessively mining late 60s and early 70s British and psychedelic rock. Like food, you want to try something new, be adventurous as you grow older, but you always go back to the comfort food of your younger days.

Songs by Manilow and the other artists who reached you when you’re young, unguarded, and emotionally-vulnerable are the songs that stay. They live rent free in your head until you’re old, cranky, and opinionated. They start playing at your most unguarded moments (like in the toilet), and in the most unlikely places or events (at a funeral and your head cues “Copacabana”). These songs and artists are that part of you that still hears the transistor radio playing “Mandy” on a hot summer afternoon.