Neil Sedaka — February 27, 2026

Long before the British Invasion changed the American songbook, Neil Sedaka was already writing it. A classically trained pianist from Juilliard, he became one of the defining voices of the Brill Building era, scoring hits like “Oh! Carol,” “Calendar Girl,” and the unforgettable “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” For teenagers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, those songs were the soundtrack of sock hops and first dates.

What made Sedaka remarkable was his ability to come back. After a quieter stretch in the late 1960s, he engineered one of the great comebacks of pop music in the 1970s, with songs like “Laughter in the Rain” and “Bad Blood” returning him to the top of the charts. He also wrote enduring hits for Connie Francis, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Tom Jones. Neil Sedaka passed away at the age of 86, having given American radio more than half a century of melody.