Artists including Neil Sedaka, Howard Greenfield, Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Dia-
mond, Paul Simon, Phil Spector, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Jack Keller were all as-
sociated with Aldon. That’s a darn good line up.
Neil Sedaka, a guy who wrote or co-wrote over 500 songs and sold millions of
records wrote the iconic song, Oh! Carol there. It was about his girlfriend at the time,
Carol Klein. Carol went on to become Carole King, a prolific songwriter and performer
in her own right, winning four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Songwriters
Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Aldon made for good company, even
though many writers were staff writers and didn’t make as much money as they should
have. But, that’s just my opinion. Later in life most of these writers/performers made a
ton of dough. So, I guess things work out in the long run.
Then there are the lyricists. They write, but they don’t perform, in most cases. These
are the folks whose job it is to write the words that make you laugh, cry, bring back a
memory or moment in time and cause their words to play over and over and over again in
the depths of your brain. This would also be known as a “hook.” But, more on hooks in a
few paragraphs.
Ira Gershwin, Bernie Taupin, Howard Greenfield, Barry Mann and Tim Rice come to
mind immediately. Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Bob Dylan, although also perform-
ers, are certainly on the list of some of the greatest lyricists. As a matter of fact, pure lyri-
cists are somewhat hard to find. There are plenty of singer/songwriters. But lyricists? Not
so much.
Lyricists are poets of a sort. Wordsmiths. They spin memorable words that tie seam-
lessly into the songs’s genre, theme, length and rhythm. Not exactly an easy task. For ex-