Barry Manilow has been in the music game for over five decades, but even he admits the rules have changed. At 81, the legendary singer-songwriter says he barely recognizes today’s approach to songwriting, and he’s not holding back on his thoughts about it. Barry Manilow songwriting once focused on melodies and emotional arcs – now, he says, it’s all about hooks and social media trends.
Speaking with Billboard, Manilow got candid about how different things are now compared to when he first broke through in the 1970s. “The songwriting has changed,” he said. “Young people don’t write the way I was trained to write. There’s no verse which goes into the chorus which goes back to the verse which goes to ending, and you change keys. They don’t do that.”
Instead, he feels modern songs lack structure. “They start the song and then they just … it feels like a run-on sentence to me. I can’t find the hook. I can’t find the chorus. It just keeps on going, and then it ends.”
Manilow’s critique doesn’t come from bitterness, it’s more about confusion over the shifting craft. His generation, he says, had a different musical blueprint. What was once a clear roadmap has now become a blur of sounds without the traditional markers he’s used to.
He also noted that many of his peers have either slowed down or stepped away from the spotlight entirely. “It’s like, ‘What? Am I the only one left?’” he joked. “It’s Billy Joel, and Elton [John] is not well and Rod [Stewart] and Neil [Diamond]. Diana Ross is still in great shape, I think. There must be only a handful of people in my world that are still there.”
But don’t expect Barry to hang it up anytime soon. “I’m still healthy. I’m strong and I’ve still got my voice and my energy,” he said. “The night I can’t hit the F natural on ‘Even Now,’ that’s the night I throw in the towel. But I can still do it.”
He’s currently wrapping up what might be his final album, though the process hasn’t been easy. Manilow admits he had to make big changes to keep it sounding fresh. “I’ve been working on it for a long time … for so long that the style of music has changed,” he explained. “I had to go back and redo [the songs] so they sounded a little more contemporary.”
That meant stripping away the elements he’s known for. “I had to take all the strings out, all the background vocals out ‘cause they don’t do that anymore. They don’t use strings and background vocals and all that,” he said. “Even I heard that it sounded dated, so we had to go back and redo it.”
Despite the changing landscape, Barry Manilow is adapting while staying true to what makes him who he is. He may not agree with every trend, but he’s not afraid to evolve when it matters.
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