Egg creams in Brighton Beach and a second-hand upright piano

Neil Sedaka was born in Brooklyn in 1939 and grew up in Brighton Beach, across the street from Neil Diamond; he also dated Carole King. His father, Mordechai “Mac” Sedaka, drove a taxi and was of Lebanese Jewish descent. “We all lived in Brooklyn,” he said, and it must have been something in the egg cream.

His musical talent showed up in second-grade choir, and when his teacher sent a note home suggesting piano lessons, his mother took a part-time job in a department store for six months to pay for a used upright. In 1947 he auditioned successfully for a piano scholarship to Juilliard's Preparatory Division, attending on Saturdays. His mother wanted a classical pianist, but Sedaka was discovering pop, and she gave in when he received a five-figure royalty check for “Calendar Girl” in 1961.

At thirteen he met Howard Greenfield, the 16-year-old son of a neighbor and an aspiring lyricist, and the two became Brill Building composers. Sedaka left the Linc-Tones, the band he had formed with classmates, in 1957 for a solo career. The hits came fast: “Oh! Carol” in 1959, “Calendar Girl” in 1960, “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” in 1961 and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” in 1962.

The Beatles and the British Invasion left him without a recording career, so in the early 1970s he moved his family to the United Kingdom and ended his partnership with Greenfield with “Our Last Song Together”. A new partner, Phil Cody, helped him back: “Laughter in the Rain” and “Bad Blood” both reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975. He wrote or co-wrote more than 500 songs, including “Stupid Cupid” for Connie Francis and “(Is This the Way to) Amarillo” for Tony Christie, entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983 and kept performing until his death in February 2026.