Cynthia Weil, songwriter partner behind indelible Brill Building hits, dies at 82

Cynthia Weil, one of the major pop songwriters to emerge from Manhattan’s Brill Building scene in the early 1960s, died Thursday at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 82.

Her daughter, Dr. Jenn Mann, confirmed Weil’s death. No cause of death was given.

Weil spent nearly four decades writing hit singles that spanned a variety of genres, many of which turned into enduring standards. Most of these songs were written in partnership with Barry Mann, the fellow songwriter Weil married in 1961, and who was at her bedside when she died.

Jenn Mann wrote in a statement to The Times, “When people imagine Cynthia Weil they see the mega-hits she wrote with my father, the Grammys she won, being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and her life portrait in the Carole King musical ‘Beautiful.’ We remember the incredible loving wife, mother, grandmother and mother-in-law she was. She was tough, brilliant, funny, fiercely loyal and beautiful.”

Cynthia Weil, clockwise from top, Carole King and Barry Mann on July 18, 1959 in New York.

(Donaldson Collection/Getty Images)

With Mann composing the music and Weil penning lyrics, the pair wrote songs that helped shape the sound and sensibility of the 1960s and beyond. The duo, working mostly a few blocks from the actual Brill Building, at 1650 Broadway, was responsible for girl-group classics such as the Crystals’ “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” and the Ronettes’ “Walking in the Rain,” the smooth uptown R&B of the Drifters’ “On Broadway,” the Righteous Brothers’ operatic “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration” and the baroque pop of Cass Elliot’s “Make Your Own Kind of Music.” Unlike some of their Brill Building peers, Weil and Mann had a knack for harder-edged material as well, as heard on the Animals’ “We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place” and Paul Revere & the Raiders’ “Kicks” and “Hungry.”

Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil circa 1965.

(Michael Ochs Archives)

Weil and Mann also managed to survive the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s with relative ease, gravitating toward adult-oriented pop. In 1977, they gave Dolly Parton her first crossover pop hit in the form of the ebullient “Here You Come Again,” kickstarting a second golden age for the songwriting team that featured such soft-rock hits as Quincy Jones and James Ingram’s “Just Once,” Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville’s “Don’t Know Much” and Sergio Mendes’ “Never Gonna Let You Go.” The period culminated with “Somewhere Out There,” a Ronstadt and Ingram duet that won the Grammy for song of the year in 1988.

During this period, Mann stepped away from Weil to co-write “He’s So Shy” for the Pointer Sisters and “Running With the Night” with Lionel Richie.

Weil was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987. She received the Ahmet Ertegun Award from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.

Weil is survived by her husband, Barry; daughter Jenn; and grandchildren, Quinn and Mendez Berman.

This article will be updated.