Celebrity
Cynthia Weil, Grammy Winning Lyricist, Dead At 82
NEW YORK — Grammy-winning songwriter Cynthia Weil, who co-wrote dozens of popular songs with her husband, Barry Mann, including “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “On Broadway,” “Walking in the Rain,” and many others, has passed away at age 82.
Weil passed away on Thursday at her home in Beverly Hills, California, “surrounded by her family,” according to Weil’s daughter Dr. Jenn Mann. The couple’s sole child, Mann, chose not to give a cause of death.
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil married in 1961 and were among the most popular music-successful duos. They were part of a unique group assembled by music moguls Don Kirshner and Al Nevins and based in Manhattan’s Brill Building district, close to Times Square. The Brill Building song factory produced many of the biggest singles of the 1960s and beyond with hit-making pairings like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Jeff Barry, and Ellie Greenwich.
Jenn Mann remarked, “I grew up around a lot of music and two wonderful, smart, creative geniuses. “My parents were each other’s greatest musical influences. When things were wonderful, people had each other, and when things weren’t so good, people had their music, according to my mother.
On songs for the Ronettes (“Walking in the Rain”), the Crystals (“He’s Sure the Boy I Love”), and other acts, Weil and Mann worked closely with producer Phil Spector. They also wrote hits for everyone from Dolly Parton to Hanson. James Horner and his team’s song “Somewhere Out There,” created for the “An American Tail” soundtrack, won Grammy Awards in 1987 for best song and best song for a Movie or Television and received nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. They collaborated on writing the Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville duet “Don’t Know Much,” which peaked at number five and won the Grammy for best pop performance in 1990.
“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” an anthem of “blue-eyed soul” composed by Spector as if scoring a tragedy and performed by the Righteous Brothers with frantic passion, is their most well-known song and a piece of history in general. In 1965, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” was the number-one song on the charts and was covered by several other musicians. No other song was played more frequently on radio and Television in the 20th century, according to Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI).
Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield’s reactions to Weil and Mann’s debut performance of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” for the Righteous Brothers were “dead silence.”
She said to Parade Magazine 2015 that Bill had responded, “Sounds good for The Everly Brothers, not the Righteous Brothers.” “We said, ‘Oh, God.’ What should I do while the large guy is singing? Bobby then asked. Spector’s Phil said, “You can go to the bank.”
When the Beatles became popular in the middle of the 1960s, many of Weil’s contemporaries struggled, but she persisted in scoring hits, occasionally with Mann or with collaborators like Michael Masser, David Foster, and John Williams, with whom she co-wrote “For Always” for the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.” Weil contributed to the songs “Here You Come Again,” Parton’s pop breakthrough, “If Ever You’re In My Arms Again” by Peabo Bryson, “Just Once” by James Ingram, “He’s So Shy” by the Pointer Sisters, and “Running With the Night” by Lionel Richie. She again made the top 10 in 1997 with Hanson’s “I Will Come to You.”
“When songs are successful, they’re like little stories. They have an introduction, a middle, and a conclusion. Weil, who eventually published the novel “I’m Glad I Did,” told Parade that the song “paints a picture of the human condition” and makes you feel how the person singing it is feeling.
Her abilities extended far beyond love songs. She and Mann co-wrote “Kicks,” a success for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1966, one of rock’s earliest anti-drug songs. She also had a talent for writing lyrics full of desire and aspiration, as evidenced by the song “On Broadway” and its iconic opening line, “They say the neon lights are bright/on Broadway.” With their account of working-class angst, “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place,” The Animals enjoyed success. The 1961 hit song “Uptown” by The Crystals dealt with race and class in a way that wasn’t frequently heard in the early days of rock.
____
He is simply one of a million males downtown.
He receives no breaks.
And he takes everything they have to offer.
Because he needs to live.
He then moves uptown, nevertheless.
Where he can proudly raise his head
He is aware that I am nearby in Uptown.
_____
Weil and Mann were introduced by King at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in 2010.
Weil and Mann were introduced by King at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in 2010, and they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987. Mann and Weil played minor roles in the popular King musical “Beautiful,” which debuted on Broadway in 2013 and chronicled the passionate camaraderie and competition between the two married couples. “They Wrote That?” by Mann and Weil was performed for a limited time in 2004.
“Cynthia’s high level of professionalism improved all of us as songwriters. The line “Just a little lovin’ early in the mornin’ beats a cup of coffee for startin’ out the day” is one of my favorite Cynthia lyrics; King posted on her social media pages on Friday, quoting the Mann-Weil song “Just a Little Lovin’,” which has been performed by Dusty Springfield and others.
If we’re lucky, we’ll know this to be true, but she composed it — and in the following line, she made the words “morning” and “yawning” rhyme. I hope Cynthia Weil’s lyrics will live on and communicate to future generations.
Weil, a native of New York City and the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe was trained in dance and piano as a young girl. At Sarah Lawrence College, she concentrated on theatre, but an agent persuaded her to attempt music. At age 20, she began working for the publishing house of “Guys and Dolls” composer Frank Loesser, where she met the man who would become her husband.
Barry walked in to play Teddy Randazzo a song as she was writing it, she said to the Los Angeles Times in 2016. Teddy Randazzo was a young Italian boy singer who was the Frankie Avalon of his time. “I questioned the front desk clerk, ‘Who is this guy? Has he ever been with a girl? ‘He’s signed to a friend of mine, Don Kirshner, and if I call Donny, maybe you can go up there to show him your songs and meet Barry again,’ she suggested. So she took that action. That’s what I did as well. He had no chance at all.
SOURCE – (AP)
Ryan O’Neal, who rose from a TV soap opera to an Oscar nomination for his role in “Love Story” and produced a witty performance in “Paper Moon,” died on Friday. “My father died peacefully today,” his son wrote on Instagram.
There was no mention of a cause of death. Ryan O’Neal was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012, a decade after being diagnosed with chronic leukemia for the first time. He was 82.
In the 1970s, Ryan O’Neal was one of the world’s biggest movie stars, working across genres with several of the era’s most acclaimed directors, including Peter Bogdanovich on “Paper Moon” and “What’s Up, Doc?” and Stanley Kubrick on “Barry Lyndon.” He frequently employed his young, blond good looks to play men with shady or dangerous histories hidden beneath their clean-cut appearances.
O’Neal continued a consistent television acting career into his 70s in the 2010s, with appearances on “Bones” and “Desperate Housewives,” but his prolonged romance with Farrah Fawcett and his troubled family life kept him in the spotlight.
Twice divorced, O’Neal was sexually involved with Fawcett for about 30 years, and they had a son, Redmond, in 1985. The pair divorced in 1997, but remarried a few years later. He stayed at Fawcett’s side as she battled cancer, which took her life in 2009 at the age of 62.
O’Neal fathered actors Griffin O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal with his first wife, Joanna Moore, including his co-star in the 1973 film “Paper Moon,” for which she received an Oscar for best supporting actress. With his second wife, Leigh Taylor-Young, he had a son named Patrick.
Ryan O’Neil’s Rocky Ties
Ryan O’Neal received his own Oscar nomination for best actor for the 1970 tearjerker drama “Love Story,” co-starring Ali MacGraw, about a young couple who fall in love, marry, and discover she is dying of cancer. The classic, but frequently satirized, statement from the film is: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
The actor had rocky ties with three of his children, including alienation from his daughter, squabbles with son Griffin, and a drug-related arrest prompted by his son Redmond’s probation check. Although his attempts to reunite with Tatum O’Neal were transformed into a short-lived reality series, his personal drama frequently overshadowed his later career.
Before gaining a prominent role on the prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place” (1964-69), O’Neal appeared in a few bit parts and did some stunt work.
Following that, O’Neal made his feature film debut in 1969 with “The Big Bounce,” co-starring his then-wife, Taylor-Young. But it was “Love Story” that catapulted him to stardom.
The romantic melodrama became one of Paramount Pictures’ biggest hits and received seven Academy Award nominations, including one for best picture. It took home the award for best music.
After “Love Story” catapulted him to stardom, Ryan O’Neal was considered for nearly every big leading job in Hollywood. The studio even tried to get him to play Michael Corleone in “The Godfather” before director Francis Ford Coppola insisted on Al Pacino.
O’Neal then appeared in Bogdanovich’s 1972 screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” as a clumsy professor opposite Barbra Streisand.
The year following “What’s Up, Doc?” Bogdanovich cast him in the 1930s con artist comedy “Paper Moon.”
Tatum, his real-life daughter
Ryan O’Neal portrayed an unscrupulous Bible salesman who preyed on widows he found through obituary notices. Tatum, his real-life daughter, played a trash-talking, cigarette-smoking orphan who need his assistance and eventually helps rehabilitate him.
Although both actors were praised by reviewers, the small girl’s outspoken performance overshadowed her father’s, making her the youngest individual in history to win a competitive Academy Award. She was ten years old when she received the prize in 1974.
The elder O’Neal’s next notable role was in Stanley Kubrick’s 18th-century epic “Barry Lyndon,” in which he played an impoverished Irish rogue who traversed Europe pretending to be an aristocracy.
However, filming the three-hour film was arduous work, and Kubrick’s legendary perfectionism caused a schism between him and the actor that never healed.
After that, O’Neal reunited with Tatum in Peter Bogdanovich’s early Hollywood comedy “Nickelodeon” (1976). However, the picture was a disappointment, and they never collaborated again. With the sequel “Oliver’s Story” (1978), he attempted to capitalize on his “Love Story” character, Oliver Barrett.
Father and daughter grew apart as Tatum grew older, with the elder actor learning of his daughter’s marriage to tennis great John McEnroe via a belated telegram, according to Ryan O’Neal, who wrote about his connection with Fawcett in a 2012 book.
“A door inside me locked the morning the telegram came, and I am still blindly searching for the key to open it,” O’Neal said in the letter titled “Both of Us.”
O’Neil’s Son Convicted and Jailed
In the 1980s, O’Neal’s career cooled further with the emerald heist drama “Green Ice” (1981) and the 1984 comedy “Irreconcilable Differences,” in which he played a busy father in an unhappy marriage whose daughter, played by 9-year-old Drew Barrymore, attempted to divorce her parents.
Ryan O’Neal’s personal life also hit rock bottom during the decade. Griffin Coppola had multiple run-ins with the law, including a 1986 boating accident in Maryland that killed Gian-Carlo Coppola, 23, son of film director Francis Ford Coppola. Griffin O’Neal was convicted of operating a boat carelessly and recklessly, received a community service sentence, and later served a brief stint in jail as a result.
With his Hollywood fame dwindling, Ryan O’Neal began appearing in TV movies and finally returned to series television with the 1991 sitcom “Good Sports,” co-starring then-lover Fawcett, although the show only lasted one season.
Both admitted that the work had put a strain on their relationship.
“We get into fights,” stated O’Neal in 1991. “She’s a tough cookie.” She anticipates being well-treated. On a set, that might get forgotten when you’re fighting the clock and trying to create a moment.”
Redmond O’Neal’s arrest
Ryan O’Neal began taking on more supporting roles in the 1989 picture “Chances Are.” In “Faithful” (1996), he played a husband who employs a hitman to kill his wife, and in “Zero Effect” (1998), he played a mystery businessman.
His relationship with Fawcett had ended by then, but they stayed friends and resumed their romance in the 2000s. However, the tumultuous O’Neal family dynamics that had previously tested their relationship continued.
The elder O’Neal was detained in 2007 for alleged assault and weapon discharge during a confrontation with Griffin, but charges were dropped. Redmond, their son, was constantly arrested, incarcerated, and spent several years in court-ordered treatment.
In September 2008, a probation check at his father’s Malibu house resulted in Redmond O’Neal’s arrest for methamphetamine possession.
Ryan O’Neal pleaded guilty and entered a drug diversion program, but he publicly denied owning the drugs. He claimed he took them from his son in order to protect him.
On April 20, 1941, Charles Patrick Ryan O’Neal was born, the son of playwright Charles O’Neal and actress Patricia Callaghan O’Neal. Before becoming a performer, Ryan O’Neal worked as a lifeguard and an amateur boxer.
Source: AP
(LOS ANGELES) – According to Pollstar’s 2023 year-end charts, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is the first to hit the billion-dollar threshold.
Swift’s groundbreaking Eras Tour was not only the No. 1 tour worldwide and in North America, but she also took in a stunning $1.04 billion with 4.35 million tickets sold across 60 tour dates, according to the concert trade newspaper.
Pollstar data is derived from box office reports, venue capacity estimations, previous Pollstar venue ticket sales data, and unspecified research collected between November 17, 2022, and November 15, 2023.
Representatives for the publication waited to respond when asked if they modified historical tour numbers to account for 2023 inflation when proclaiming Swift the first to cross the billion-dollar mark.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Is The First Tour To Gross Over $1 Billion, Pollstar Says
Pollstar also discovered that Swift earned roughly $200 million in merchandise sales and that her blockbuster film adaptation of the tour, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” garnered approximately $250 million in sales, making it the highest-grossing concert film of all time.
Pollstar believes that Swift will have a strong year in 2024 as well. According to the magazine, the Eras Tour will again hit $1 billion within its eligibility window, implying Swift will earn more than $2 billion throughout the tour.
Swift’s tour was followed worldwide by Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Coldplay, Harry Styles, Morgan Wallen, Ed Sheeran, Pink, The Weeknd, and Drake.
Swift was ranked first in North America, followed by Beyoncé, Morgan Wallen, Drake, P! nk, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Ed Sheeran, George Strait, Karol G, and RBD.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2)/taylor-swift-eras-tour-081023-3-3411bb8115944906a22fa9d1b7239d13.jpg "Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Is The First Tour To Gross Over $1 Billion, Pollstar Says")
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Is The First Tour To Gross Over $1 Billion, Pollstar Says
Aside from Swift, 2023 was a watershed year for concert sales: internationally, the top 100 tours witnessed a 46% increase from the previous year, costing $9.17 billion compared to $6.28 billion in 2022.
That figure increased from $4.77 billion in North America to $6.63 billion last year.
Swift was voted Time Magazine’s Person of the Year earlier this week. Last month, Apple Music honored her as its Artist of the Year, while Spotify reported she was 2023’s most-streamed artist globally, with over 26.1 billion streams since January 1, breaking Bad Bunny’s three-year record.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Is The First Tour To Gross Over $1 Billion, Pollstar Says
Consider 2023 to be a year of unparalleled pop music dominance.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is a highly anticipated event that showcases the evolution of her music throughout the years. The tour features performances from each distinct era of her career, allowing fans to experience the unique sound and style that defined each period.
Attendees can expect an immersive and nostalgic journey through Taylor Swift’s musical transformation, making it a must-see for fans of her work.
SOURCE – AP
Taylor Swift is rounding up the year with yet another honor: she was voted Time magazine’s 2023 “Person of the Year,” beating out Barbie and King Charles III.
“While her popularity has grown across the decades, this is the year that Swift, 33, achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force,” according to the magazine.
Time chose Swift because she found a way to give people all over the world hope in the midst of some extremely trying circumstances.
“No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well,” according to Time’s profile. “Achieving this feat is something we often chalk up to the alignments of planets and fates, but giving too much credit to the stars ignores her skill and her power.”
Taylor Swift Named Time’s ‘Person Of The Year’
The magazine also interviewed Swift: “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been.”
And, yes, she spoke publicly for the first Time about her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce. The couple began hanging out after Kelce donned a friendship bracelet on his podcast, which Swift described as “metal as hell.”
“I’m just there to support Travis,” she said of her attendance at NFL games, which have helped some of them gain viewers. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”
Swift’s “Eras Tour,” which grossed over $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone, was a highlight of her incredible year, according to research firm QuestionPro. StubHub also issued its 2023 “Year in Live Experiences” report on Wednesday, stating that the “Eras Tour” was the website’s largest tour.
Swift has not only crushed Super Bowl-sized arenas, but also neighborhood cinema theaters.
According to AMC, the pop singer’s “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” concert film grossed roughly $96 million in its debut weekend in the United States and Canada, making it the highest-grossing concert film domestically for an opening weekend.
Among all of this, Swift broke her own Spotify record by being the most-streamed artist in the streamer’s history in a single day, while “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day this year.
Taylor Swift is a renowned singer-songwriter and actress known for her narrative songwriting and autobiographical lyrics.
Taylor Swift Named Time’s ‘Person Of The Year’
She has achieved widespread commercial success and critical acclaim for her music, which spans various genres including pop, country, and rock.
Taylor has won numerous awards, including multiple Grammy Awards, and has established herself as one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
In addition to her music career, she has also appeared in films and television shows, further cementing her status as a multifaceted entertainer.
SOURCE – CNN
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