The pop lyricist who gave us that lovin’ feeling

Cynthia Weil 1940–2023

Cynthia Weil’s lyrics made 1960s pop soar and swell with emotion. Together with songwriting partner and husband Barry Mann, she became a fixture of midtown Manhattan’s Brill Building music scene alongside Carole King, Neil Diamond, and Burt Bacharach. Weil and Mann wrote hundreds of songs, including “On Broadway” and “Walking in the Rain.” The 1964 hit “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” paired their heartrending lyrics with the Righteous Brothers’ powerhouse vocals to become American radio’s most-replayed song of the 20th century. “When they are successful, songs are like little novels,” Weil said. “It paints a picture of the human condition.”

A native New Yorker, “Weil found her talent for writing song lyrics early,” said Rolling Stone. By age 20, she was working for Broadway composer Frank Loesser. The following year she met Mann, and within months, they’d married and “notched their first hit,” Tony Orlando’s “Bless You.” Together, they outgrew the teeny-bopper era with songs such as “We Gotta Get Out ofThis Place,” which became an anti-war anthem for the Animals, and “Make Your Own Kind of Music” for Mama Cass.

Weil’s “lyrical success continued well after the mud of Woodstock had dried,” said The New York Times. She co-wrote 1980s hits for the Pointer Sisters (“He’s So Shy”) and Lionel Richie (“Running With the Night”). In 1988, the James Ingram–Linda Ronstadt duet “Somewhere Out There” won Weil and Mann their first songwriting Grammy, and in 2010, they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “There’s no reason a person shouldn’t write better 20 years after they start,” she said in 1986. “Writers know more and have more life experience to draw on.”