Barry Mann

Barry Mann (born Barry Imberman, February 9, 1939, Brooklyn, New York City) is an American songwriter, and part of a successful songwriting partnership with his wife, Cynthia Weil. Mann married Weil during August 1961. The couple has one daughter: Dr. Jenn Berman.
 
He has written or co-written 53 hits in the UK and 98 in the US.
 
Mann's first successful song as a writer was &She Say (Oom Dooby Doom)&, a Top 20 chart-scoring song composed for the band The Diamonds during 1959. Mann co-wrote the song with Mike Anthony (Michael Logiudice). During 1961, Mann had his greatest success to that time with &I Love How You Love Me&, written with Larry Kolber and a No. 5 scoring single for the band The Paris Sisters. (Seven years later, Bobby Vinton's version would score in the Top 10.) Also during 1961, Mann himself scored the Top 40 as a performer with a novelty song co-written with Gerry Goffin, &Who Put the Bomp&, which parodied the nonsense words of the then-popular doo-wop genre and scored the Top 40.
 
Despite his success as a singer with &Who Put the Bomp&, Mann chose to channel most of his creativity into songwriting, forming a prolific partnership with Weil, a lyricist he met while both were staff songwriters at Don Kirshner's and Al Nevin's company Aldon Music, whose offices were located in Manhattan near the famed composing-and-publishing factory, the Brill Building. Mann and Weil, who married during 1961, developed some songs intended to be socially conscious, with successes such as &Uptown& by The Crystals, &We Gotta Get out of This Place& by the Animals, &Magic Town& by the Vogues and &Kicks& by Paul Revere & The Raiders. (Mann and Weil were disturbed when &Only In America&, a song they'd written with the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and conceived originally for and recorded by The Drifters as a protest against racial prejudice, was re-worked by Leiber and Stoller into an uncontroversial success for Jay & The Americans.)
 
As of May 2009, Mann's song catalog lists 635 songs. He has received 56 popular music, country, and Rhythm&Blues awards from Broadcast Music Incorporated, and 46 Millionaire Awards for radio performances numbering more than one million plays. The song &You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'&, co-written with Weil and Phil Spector, was the most played song of the 20th century, with more than 14 million plays.
 
Mann has composed songs for movies, most notably &Somewhere Out There&, co-written with Weil and James Horner, for the 1986 animated movie An American Tail. Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram performed the song as a duet during the movie's closing credits; their version was released as a single, which scored No. 2 on the Billboards charts and became a &gold&-scoring record. &Somewhere Out There& would win two 1987 Grammy Awards, as Song of the Year and Best Song Written for a Motion Picture or Television. &Somewhere Out There& was also nominated for a 1986 Oscar as best song, but lost to &Take My Breath Away& from &Top Gun&. Mann's other movie work includes the scores for I Never Sang for My Father and Muppet Treasure Island, and songs for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Oliver and Company.
 
Mann co-wrote, with Dan Hill, the song &Sometimes When We Touch,& which scored No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
 
During 1987, Mann and Weil were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. During 2011 they received the Johnny Mercer Award – the greatest honor from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
 
Mann and Weil were named among the 2010 recipients of Ahmet Ertegun Award from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mann and Weil now operate a publishing company named Dyad Music.