Prince of pop returns to musical roots
Down dooby doo down down, comma comma
Down dooby doo down down …
SOME readers may be mystified by the above nonsense, but baby boomers won’t need any further introduction to Neil Sedaka than the opening sounds of his 1962 pop classic Breaking Up is Hard to Do.
During his 50 years in the music business, the singer-songwriter has had dozens of hits and sold millions of records; his songs have been covered by performers ranging from the Carpenters to Frank Sinatra. He even has a street named after him in Brooklyn, New York.
Few artists would have survived Sedaka’s roller-coaster career: after initial pop success at a very young age, he disappeared from the charts in the mid-1960s. He spent a decade in the wilderness: the "hungry years" when he performed at leagues clubs and had only two hit songs.
Then in 1975 he came back with a vengeance, returning to gold and platinum sales with his Solitaire album, the song Laughter in the Rain and the enormous international success of Grammy-winner Love Will Keep Us Together for the Captain and Tennille.
He describes himself as a fighter, a survivor and an optimist.
"Australia has been very wonderful to me over the years," he says by phone from New York. "I have a very warm relationship with Australia, it’s an ongoing love affair."
Sedaka never lost his enthusiasm for work and is looking forward to collaborating with orchestras across the country, performing old hits and new compositions. The tour begins with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, which will premiere Sedaka’s first classical piece, Joie de Vivre.
"It goes back to my roots," he says. "I started out as a classical pianist at Juilliard School in New York."
Born in 1939, Sedaka was a prodigy from a working class family in Brooklyn. He had ambitions to become a concert pianist and practised for hours each day on a second-hand piano. His parents were shocked when at 13 he began writing pop songs.
Tags: 2, love, rock, winner
“Personal ethics, a thing of the past?”haha.. as if.
Ah your right. Total over generalization but curiously, is it “illegal copying” if you upload music from someone else’s play list onto your ipod?
good work sherlock
i remember being in college with an awesome ethernet connection with napster first came about and i gotta say, it was awesome. however, when it comes down to it, it’s blatant stealing and disregard for the law and it would be quite difficult for universities to totally ignore the fact that students are using their connections to break the law (whether we agree with the law or not).
You mean you’ve never seen a bear take a dump in a tree?
Or, simply without the means.
Hey, I love that journal. ‘Grats on getting published in it.
See: prohibition.Laws that only a very small minority support are generally pretty worthless.
make that 18-26 year olds:)piracy exists because companies mire themselves down in legal mumbo jumbo as reasons for not doing new things. they had to be FORCED to do itunes, practically.the psp and all its hackability is something that SHOULD be condoned and sanctioned by sony but because of all the legal crap people have to do it behind the scenes. we wouldnt have to go to such measures if the market would keep up and wasn’t so greedy.