Brill Building - Writers

Writers

Many of the best works in this diverse category were written by a loosely affiliated group of songwriter-producer teams — mostly duos — that enjoyed immense success and who collectively wrote some of the biggest hits of the period. Many in this group were close friends and/or (in the cases of Goffin-King, Mann-Weil and Greenwich-Barry) married couples, as well as creative and business associates — and both individually and as duos, they often worked together and with other writers in a wide variety of combinations. Some (Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond, Boyce and Hart) recorded and had hits with their own music.

• Burt Bacharach and Hal David
• Bert Berns
• Sonny Bono
• Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
• Neil Diamond
• Andy Kim
• Giant, Baum & Kaye
• Gerry Goffin and Carole King
• Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry
• Marvin Hamlisch
• Hugo & Luigi
• John Kander and Fred Ebb
• Artie Kornfeld
• Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
• Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil
• Shadow Morton
• Laura Nyro
• Claus Ogerman
• Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman
• Tony Powers
• Beverly Ross
• Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield
• Paul Simon as Jerry Landis
• Phil Spector
• Eddie Snyder

Other famous musicians who were headquartered in The Brill Building:

• Bobby Darin
• The Drifters
• Connie Francis
• Lesley Gore
• Ben E. King
• Darlene Love
• Liza Minnelli
• Tony Orlando
• Gene Pitney
• The Ronettes
• The Shangri-Las
• The Shirelles
• Frankie Valli

Among the hundreds of hits written by this group are "Yakety Yak" (Leiber-Stoller), "Save the Last Dance for Me" (Pomus-Shuman), "The Look of Love" (Bacharach-David), "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (Sedaka-Greenfield), "Devil in Disguise" (Giant-Baum-Kaye), "The Loco-Motion" (Goffin-King), "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" (Mann-Weil) and "River Deep, Mountain High" (Spector-Greenwich-Barry).