Barry Manilow

Shut up. I already know what you're thinking.
Okay, I don't... but I CAN feel your judgment, so pipe the fuck down anyway.

Now, I know Manilow is not the coolest cat to most of you, but he truly changed my life for the better. There are songs of his that I listened to as a child that to this day grip my soul with a giant fist and squeeze it til I cry. Songs about pain and about loss and about love and about lust and about happiness and  betrayal. Manilow has a song for everything, really.

First of all, this is one of the only things that in therapy I can truly blame my mother for. I was but a victim in the womb of the Fanilow gene. There isn't a time in my life I don't remember hearing his music. As a three year old feeling the pain of He Doesn't Care on the Manilow album. As a four year old learning Broadway songs I may never have known while bopping around my living room to Showstoppers. As a five year old wanting to sing the Baby It's Cold Outside duet with him on Because It's Christmas. Listening to Even Now at six and crying missing my dad. Watching Copacabana (yes, lifetime made a movie based around the song - starring Manilow & Annette O'Toole) until I literally broke the vhs tape. Getting my friends in 8th grade into his music. Blasting his cover of If I Can Dream in my bedroom at sixteen while I lay on my floor just consuming the music. Hating my life listening to Read Em & Weep after my first real heartbreak.

Barry Manilow is commonplace in my life. He's probably the only constant.

The first time I saw him in concert was when I was four. We saw him in the alley on our way out and I cried. I'll never forget seeing him that close. The black leather bomber jacket he wore, his glasses, that ten foot spiky hair. I can still see it clear as day. I saw him again when I was probably about 10 and then again when I was about 14. I won tickets to see him live a couple years ago. If he's here, I will never not go.

I know it's not particularly the coolest musical choice, but neither is ignorance, my friends. So many people dismiss his music at hearing Mandy or I Write the Songs. But let me tell you, there is no other musician/vocalist/performer that has such deep access to my heart the way Barry Manilow does. Ask your mother; I'm sure she feels the same way.