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An introduction to some of the best pop music of the 20th century, a style that was both innocent and sophisticated.

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The Brill Building, at 1619 Broadway in New York City, gave its name to a style of pop music that was both innocent and sophisticated. Along with its less-glamorous neighbor at 1650 Broadway, this 11-story office block was the New York home of the music business – you could find a songwriter, a publisher, record a demo, and play it to a radio plugger, all in one building.

Among the tenants were some of the finest songwriting teams of the 20th century, including Goffin-King, Bacharach-David, Lieber-Stoller, Barry-Greenwich, and Mann-Weil. Between them, they penned scores of hits for the girl groups and teen idols who dominated the US airwaves between Elvis joining the army and the arrival of the Beatles and the Brit Invasion in 1964.

Below is our pick of some of the most timeless recordings from the Brill Building era – sticking with a self-imposed rule of one track per artist.

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The Chiffons – One Fine Day

For the follow-up to their 1963 hit “He’s So Fine,” this New York four-piece girl group turned to Brill Building pop songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King. Sticking with the “fine” formula, the husband-and-wife songwriting team came up trumps with “One Fine Day.” Almost two decades later, King took the song top 20 for a second time, when she “covered” it on her Pearls LP in 1980.

Ben E King – Stand By Me

The unexpected addition of Latin rhythms and sensibilities to what is essentially a southern soul record owes its origins to the Cubano-Ricano club nights around Broadway in New York. Monday Mambo at the Palladium was a haven for the Brill Building songwriters – including Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who penned this classic that’s been covered by everyone from John Lennon to Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay at the time).

Bobby Vee – Take Good Care of My Baby

The songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King followed up their success with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” on this number one hit for Bobby Vee. Born Robert Thomas Velline, Vee was first noticed as a stand-in for Buddy Holly, and, for a while, boasted a young Robert Zimmerman (later better known as Bob Dylan) as a member of his backing band. This song was released in July 1961 and was covered by the Beatles at their unsuccessful audition for Decca Records on New Year’s Day 1962.

Elvis Presley – Jailhouse Rock

The Brill Building pop songwriting team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller connected with Elvis Presley over a shared passion. As Mike Stoller explained, before meeting Elvis, he and Lieber “thought we were the only two white kids who knew anything about the blues.” In his pioneering work of rock criticism, Mystery Train , Greil Marcus calls Jailhouse Rock Elvis’ best movie, noting that it “also contained his best movie music, partly because Lieber and Stoller were writing the songs.”

The Shangri-Las – Leader of the Pack

It may sound morbid, but for a while around the end of the 50s and start of the 60s, there was something of a craze for songs about teenagers dying tragic deaths. These teenage tragedy records were known as “death discs,” or more gruesomely as “splatter platters.” George Morton came up with the idea for this one, which he finished off with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich at the Brill Building.

The Righteous Brothers – You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’

After successful appearances on the TV show Shindig , Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield were signed by Phil Spector, who decided they were the perfect act to front his Wagnerian “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” a deserved smash hit around the world. Written by Spector alongside Mann and Weil, it was chosen by the RIAA as one of the 25 Songs of the Century in 2001.

The Clovers – Love Potion No9

Hailing from Washington, DC, The Clovers owed a debt to The Coasters stylistically, and even secured a top 30 hit with a song originally written for the latter group. In a first and, presumably, last for pop music, this Leiber and Stoller number tells the bizarre tale of how the singer bought an over-strong aphrodisiac from a gypsy and ended up kissing a cop on 34th and Vine.

Manfred Mann – Do Wah Diddy Diddy

As if by way of illustrating that the British Invasion had well and truly usurped homegrown talent in the US, when The Exciters recorded the Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich number “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” it did nothing. But when the London beat combo Manfred Mann covered it shortly after, it became a worldwide hit, topping the chart on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dionne Warwick – Walk On By

Dionne Warwick recorded one Bacharach and David song after another. “Anyone Who Had a Heart” was her first hit, followed by the devastating heartbreak of “Walk On By,” and a string of others. “The more Hal and I wrote with Dionne, the more we could see what she could do,” explained Bacharach. Hal David added, “There was nothing that Burt could write musically or I could write lyrically that she couldn’t do.”

The Carpenters – (They Long To Be) Close To You

Proving that a great song refuses to go away, “(They Long To Be) Close To You” was originally released by Richard Chamberlain in 1963, then recorded by Dusty Springfield in 1964, although her version was shelved until 1967. It became a worldwide hit The Carpenters in 1970. As Richard Carpenter explained, “That record, that song, the arrangement, all of it, is misleading to the uninitiated, because it sounds simple. And it’s anything but simple.”

Burt Bacharach/Billy J Kramer with the Dakotas – Trains and Boats and Planes

By 1965, Brill Building pop songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David were enjoying global success, and this number reflected (in particular) Bacharach’s jet-setting lifestyle. He was spending much of his time in England, which is how this song came to the attention of Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who suggested it for one of his other groups, Billy J Kramer with the Dakotas. Bacharach and Billy J’s versions both charted simultaneously.

The Shirelles – Will You Love Me Tomorrow

The first US number one by a black female group, the aching “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” has gone down as one of the greatest Brill Building songs in history – but the Shirelles almost turned it down, thinking it too country for them. “I can’t do this song because I don’t think it’s a Shirelles song,” lead singer Shirley Owens told producer Luther Dixon. Fortunately, he convinced her otherwise.

Jerry Butler – Make It Easy on Yourself

Having initially traded his gospel roots for an R&B partnership with Curtis Mayfield in The Impressions, Jerry Butler enjoyed a run of successful solo singles, including this timeless Burt Bacharach and Hal David song. Butler first heard the song in demo form, with vocals by an upcoming singer named Dionne Warwick, who would herself have a hit with the song in 1970.

The Ronettes – Be My Baby

Any list of the best-ever Brill Building pop songs will feature “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes near the top. But while it’s often rightly lauded for the arrangement, the production, and for Ronnie Spector’s perfect delivery, what is often overlooked is that all this decoration is hung from a brilliant pop song, written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector. As Brian Wilson said, “It has the promise to make the world better.”

Ike & Tina Turner – River Deep Mountain High

By 1966, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry were divorcing, and they hadn’t written with Phil Spector for two years. The estranged nature of the writers meant that each brought their own parts to this song, which Spector stitched together to create a powerhouse of a single that could stand on its own two feet in 1966, a year of exceptionally high standards.

Jackie DeShannon – What the World Needs Now Is Love

In 1965, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were ahead of the trend. Two years before The Beatles told the world “All You Need Is Love,” Jackie De Shannon’s heavenly top 10 hit record was seen by some as a comment on the escalating war in Vietnam, proclaiming that love was “the only thing that there’s just too little of.”

The Beach Boys – I Can Hear Music

After the experiments that had defined their work through Pet Sounds and the aborted Smile , The Beach Boys looked to return to basics, and it was to the Brill Building they turned. With Brian Wilson taking a break from production duties, Carl stepped up to the plate, and it was his treatment of Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector’s “I Can Hear Music” that marked the beginning of this next period in The Beach Boys’ career.

The Coasters – Yakety Yak

In rock’n’roll history, there aren’t many groups like The Coasters. For a start, they were already in their late 20s and early 30s while their witty and infectious take on doo-wop was being lapped up by teenagers. Songwriting team Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller wrote a string of hit records for them, including “Searchin’,” “Poison Ivy,” “Charlie Brown,” and this number one from 1958.

Tom Jones – What’s New Pussycat?

Woody Allen’s first screenplay – the 1965 movie What’s New Pussycat? – featured a stellar cast, headed up by Peter Sellers and Peter O’Toole. But it was another Brit who received the film’s only Oscar nomination – the suave Welsh singer Tom Jones, who had a hit with Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s title song.

Little Eva – The Loco-Motion

“Little” Eva Boyd was Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s babysitter, although the young singer was barely younger than the songwriting couple. Having been inspired to write “The Loco-Motion” by Eva dancing with their daughter Louise, Goffin and King used Eva to sing on a demo of the song, with a view to offering it to Dee Dee Sharp. But Eva’s vocal was so good, they made a star of her – losing their babysitter in the process.

Sandie Shaw – (There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me

Hoping to appeal to the British love of great American R&B, Burt Bacharach took Lou Johnson to the UK to promote his single “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me.” However, it would be a British cover that made it a hit, when this 1964 version by Sandie Shaw replaced Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” at the top of the British charts.

The Animals – We Gotta Get Out of This Place

While the Brit Invasion would ultimately inspire many aspiring groups to become songwriters, it’s worth remembering than many of those early Brit Invasion hitmakers were raised on a diet of American songs – and Newcastle’s The Animals were no exception. Having enjoyed a global smash with “The House of the Rising Sun,” they turned to the Brill Building for more hits. This Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil composition was just the ticket.

Dusty Springfield – I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself

Arguably Britain’s favorite female singer during the 60s, Dusty Springfield was a huge fan of two of the Brill Building’s most celebrated songwriters: “Bacharach and David changed pop music,” she said. As well as this UK top 3 single, she had a hit with another of their songs, “Wishin’ and Hopin’,” as well as including their “Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa” and “Anyone Who Had a Heart” on her debut LP.

Gene Pitney – Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa

Few of the Brill Building songwriters made a name for themselves as performers. But as well as having penned hits such as “Rubber Ball” for Bobby Vee, “Hello Mary Lou” by Rick Nelson, and “He’s a Rebel” by The Crystals, Gene Pitney enjoyed a remarkable run of singles as a singer, spanning three decades, including this classic from the pens of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Cass Elliot – It’s Getting Better

Following the split of The Mamas and the Papas, ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot set out on her own, scoring hits with two songs from the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil – “It’s Getting Better” and “Make Your Own Kind of Music.” The former was a top 10 UK hit, despite competition from a cover version by former Manfred Mann frontman Paul Jones.

The Walker Brothers – Walking in the Rain

By 1967, much of the innocence those Brill Building writers packed into their songs had been replaced mind-expanding drugs and the war in Vietnam – among many other things. And yet so perfectly timeless and universal were so many of those songs that they remained relevant still. “Walking in the Rain” had originally been a hit for The Ronettes in 1964, but its cinematic scope was perfect for The Walker Brothers, whose rendition was their farewell single.

Dion & the Belmonts – A Teenager in Love

With “why must I be a teenager in love?,” Doc Pomus and his songwriting partner Mort Shuman cut straight to the heart of rock’n’roll. Hailing from the tough streets of the Bronx, Dion had initial misgivings about such a romantic song, but it made him a star.

The Paris Sisters – I Love How You Love Me

With an opera singer for a mother, The Paris Sisters had been singing together as long as they could remember. Their breakthrough finally came with this sweltering Barry Mann and Larry Kolber Brill Building pop song in 1961.

The Beatles – Baby It’s You

If you’re lucky enough to stumble on a setlist of the pre-fame Beatles, you’ll find it riddled with songs by American girl groups. For their first LP in 1963, they included not one but two covers of songs by The Shirelles – “Baby It’s You” and “Boys.” However, LA rock band Smith trumped both bands, when their rock-soul version of “Baby It’s You” went US top 5 in 1969.

Looking for more? Check out our history of the Great American Songbook.

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• Brill Building

The sound that dominated the pop charts.

Thanks to a loose collective of composers, lyricists, music publishers, and bands, the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway in New York City - as well as nearby 1650 Broadway - gave rise to a sound that would shape popular music of the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s. Comprised of 165 music businesses in its heydey, the Brill Building and its related offices were a place where a song could be conceived, written, recorded, promoted, and published, creating an inextricable link between creativity and commerce. Influenced by Latin music, Traditional black gospel, and rhythm and blues, the Brill Building sound was largely orchestrated by composer teams such as Goffin-King, Mann-Weill, Greenwich-Barry, and Bacharach-David, and survived as an enduring sonic quality that would shape the sound of popular and rock music for decades to come.

Contact the Library & Archives for information on this and other sheet music in our collection. To open a larger version of each cover, right click on the image and click Open Image in New Tab.

Many of our books pertaining to the history of Brill Building pop can be found here . Below are highlights from our collection.

Spotify Playlist

Rock's backpages articles.

Free articles are available on  Rock's Backpages  through the Free on RBP link. The articles below may require you to be on-site at the Library & Archives in order to read them.

• The Brill Building Sound Steven R Rosen, Paste, 22 August 2011
• The Hit Factory: New York's Brill Building David Kamp, Vanity Fair, November 2001
• Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich: Weavers Of Dreams Greg Shaw, The History of Rock, 1982

Archival Resources

The following archival collections at the Library & Archives are focused on Brill Building personnel.

Jeff Barry Collection Along with his wife and business partner, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry was one of the most influential pop songwriters of the 1960s. This collection contains three black-and-white photographs featuring Barry with various musicians, including Van Morrison. It also contains a page printed from Ellie Greenwich's Web site, featuring a photograph of Barry and Greenwich, as well as Paul Case, Jerry Leiber, Artie Ripp, Ed Silvers, and Phil Spector at a 1964 BMI dinner.

Beverly Ross Collection Beverly Ross is an American songwriter known for her work at the Brill Building in 1950s New York. This collection documents Ross' work as a Brill Building songwriter in the 1950s, and in the late 1960s as a staff writer for Kama Sutra Records, and provides insight to the work of popular music composers during that era. The paper materials include her contract with Kama Rippa Music, Inc., copyright registration forms, lead sheets (some annotated), and sheet music. 

Jean Thomas Logs Jean Thomas is an American singer and songwriter who was part of the Brill Building and girl group scenes found in New York during the 1960s. The logs contain four books that Thomas used from 1963 to 1972 to document her singing career. These Logs list the recording sessions that Thomas participated in and the companies with which she worked. Many of the entries note the songs on which she sang backing vocals, as well as other information, such as if it was a demo recording and the amount of money she earned for the work. 

For more information on the composers, lyricists, and other personnel related to the Brill Building, you can search our Archives Catalog using the following terms:

• Bobby Darin
• Howard Greenfield
• Ellie Greenwich
• Jerry Goffin
• Goffin-King
• Carole King
• Don Kirshner
• Gene Pitney
• Beverly Ross
• Jean Thomas
• Last Updated: Aug 4, 2023 3:17 PM
• URL: https://library.rockhall.com/brill_building

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How the Brill Building Changed Pop Music

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• Brill Building at 1619 Broadway

The Brill Building isn't just an art deco structure in midtown Manhattan — it’s also the name of a musical genre. Throughout the early and mid-1960s, the “Brill Building sound” became synonymous with groundbreaking pop music. The heyday of the Brill Building era was short-lived, but in one six-year span, the songwriters, arrangers, musicians, and producers behind this sound contributed to hundreds of Billboard Hot 100 hits , including “Stand By Me” (Ben E. King, 1962), “One Fine Day” (the Chiffons, 1963), and “Be My Baby” (the Ronettes, 1963).

It Pioneered “Assembly-Line Pop”

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It Created Sophisticated Music

It Showcased Young Talent

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It Helped Integrate Popular Music

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Can you go inside the Brill Building as an ordinary member of the public? If so what is in there now? If not, is it possible to get a tour? I love music & am interested in the building's history.

I love that building, and sill miss Colony Records. You can probably just walk into the lobby, but I've never heard of any proper tours there. There's a lot of information online about its history.

Thanks outoftheinkwell, your reply is much appreciated. There's been quite a few programmes on about it where I live, & just wondered what was still there that was around in its heyday. I'd read about the colony records - always a shame when places like that close down; seems like a bit of history is gone.

http://www.nycwalk.com/broadway-excursion.html

This topic has been closed to new posts due to inactivity.

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The Brill Building sound came out from the stretch along Broadway between 49th and 53rd streets. The Brill Building (named after the Brill Brothers whose clothing store was first located in the street level corner and would later buy it), was at 1619 Broadway. After its completion in 1931, the owners were forced  by a deepening Depression to rent space to music publishers, since there were few other takers. The first three, Southern Music, Mills Music and Famous-Music were soon joined by others. By 1962 the Brill Building contained 165 music businesses.

The Brill Building in the early '60s was a classic model of vertical integration. There you could write a song or make the rounds of publishers until someone bought it. Then you could go to another floor and get a quick arrangement, lead sheet for $10, get some copies made at the duplication office; book an hour at a demo studio; hire some of the musicians and singers that hung around; and finally cut a demo of the song. Then you could take it around the building to the record companies, publishers, artist's managers or even the artists themselves. If you made a deal there were radio promoters available to sell the record.

Mostly Rock 'n' Roll Nostalgia

• Rock 'n' Roll

The Brill Building Sound Heralded Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Arrival

by Andrew Goutman · December 20, 2023

Producers and music publishers Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and Little Eva in front. Source: Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images

In New York in the ’60s, Brill Building songwriters were mid-town’s answer to Tin Pan Alley.

Prologue: tin pan alley.

A century ago, the epicenter of America’s music industry was located in lower Manhattan on West 28th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. Here is where songwriters and the nascent music publishing business set up shop starting in 1885. It was called Tin Pan Alley, an affectionately acerbic name the New York Herald gave to mean “cheap upright pianos.”

From the early century until World War II, Tin Pan Alley was a lively, colorful place filled with songwriters, vaudeville and Broadway characters, and “song-pluggers,” those pianist and singers who hustled sheet music for music publishers.

Prominent Tin Pan Alley composers were Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael, George M. Cohan, George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II, Scott Joplin, Cole Porter, and Johnny Mercer.

The Brill Building

Source: Wikipedia

The Brill Building Sound

As musical tastes changed after the war (cue rock ‘n’ roll!), Manhattan’s musical hub shifted several blocks north to the nondescript Brill Building at 1619 Broadway. A ’60s equivalent of Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building sound became renowned for 1) advancing the craft of songwriting, 2)  hiring youthful songwriters to write for their teenage peers, and 3) its specialized division of labor in which “songwriters worked closely with producers and A&R personnel to match selected artists with the appropriate songs.”

How Rock ‘n’ Roll Began, Reimagined

This method, cynically dubbed “assembly line pop,” changed the course of popular music by creating hundreds of quality songs.

The partners with Neil Sedaka. Source: history-of-rock.com

Don Kirshner

At the center of it all was “The Man with the Golden Ear,” Don Kirshner. Along with partner Al Nevins, Kirsher founded a music publishing firm across the street from the Brill Building called Aldon (Al+Don) Music in 1958. Recognizing the burgeoning popularity of rock ‘n’ roll, Kirshner had big plans: supplying songs for this potentially lucrative market.

Aldon’s clients were the big record labels–Columbia, Atlantic, and RCA–which demanded recordings of high quality in great quantity. Kirshner and Nevins took this to heart while fashioning an ecosystem of song production.

Teenagers Writing for Teenagers

Kirshner rejected the “teen idol” approach that had become the industry standard, to wit: find a young singer with a bankable look and ply him or her with whatever song happened to be around. Instead, Brill Building practice took the opposite tack : 1) understand what the kids wanted and why; 2) realize that any singer could break through when given a strong song; and 3) concentrate on writing good songs that could be hits because they were written well.

That was the key: good songwriters. Kirshner and company were assembling the best and the brightest.

Brill Building Songwriters

Teenagers Carole King (songwriter) and Paul Simon (guitarist) at an RCA Victor recording session in 1959. Source: Sony Music Entertainment Archive

Carole King

Carole King seemed destined to be a premier Brill Building performer. She was raised in the same Brooklyn neighborhood as crooner Neil Sedaka. While attending Queens College, King met Gerry Goffin , who was to become her songwriting partner and husband. In 1959, Carole became pregnant with her first daughter Louise, and so King and Goffin quit college and took day jobs. They wrote songs together in the evening.

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The Goffin-King pairing was perhaps the most prolific in the Aldon stable. King composed the melodies (as did Sedaka, who partnered with Howard Greenfield). The songwriters were under constant pressure to produce hits. The Brill Building method might have been successful, but not without its warts, as Carole explained to Simon Frith and the Sociology of Rock :

Every day, we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky. You’d just sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubby hole composing a song just like yours. The pressure in the Brill Building was really terrific…Donny [Kirshner] would say, ‘We need a new smash hit!’-and we’d all go back and write a song and the next day we’d audition it for Bobby Vee’s producer.

Brill Building songwriting team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller unveil “Jailhouse Rock” (1957) for the King. Source: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images

Carole King and Gerry Goffin in 1960 wrote their all-time classic, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” a song incredibly frank for that period for its reworking of the old “will you respect me in the morning?”

Here are the Shirelles singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” a 2-minute, 45-second video published by Classic Hits Studio via YouTube :

Here is a playlist of my Top 25 Brill Building hits, divided up by respective songwriters, based on research by Rolling Stone. 

Gerry Goffin and Carole King:

Some Kind of Wonderful, the Drifters, 1961 Take Good Care of My Baby, Bobby Vee, 1961 (#1) The Locomotion, Little Eva, 1962 (#1) One Fine Day, the Chiffons, 1963 A Natural Woman, Aretha Franklin, 1967

Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil:

Who Put the Bomp, Barry Mann, 1961 I Love How You Love Me, Bobby Vinton, 1961 Blame It on the Bossa Nova, Eydie Gorme, 1963 Walking in the Rain, the Ronettes, 1964 You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, the Righteous Brothers, 1964 (#1)

Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry (w/Phil Spector)

Da Doo Ron Ron, the Crystals, 1963 Be My Baby, the Ronettes, 1963 Then He Kissed Me, the Crystals, 1963 Chapel of Love, the Dixie Cups, 1964 (#1) River Deep, Mountain High, Ike & Tina Turner, 1966

Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka:

Stupid Cupid, Connie Francis, 1958 Calendar Girl, Neil Sedaka, 1960 Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen, Neil Sedaka, 1961 Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Neil Sedaka, 1962 (#1) Charms, Bobby Vee, 1963

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller:

Hound Dog, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thorton, 1953 Yakety Yak, the Coasters, 1958 (#1) Charley Brown, the Coasters, 1959 Kansas City, Wilbert Harrison, 1959 (#1) Stand By Me, Ben E. King, 1961

Editor’s note: Part II of The Sound of New York, about the punk/new wave craze in the seventies, will appear after the calendar turns. –AG

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Tags: Al Nevins Aldon Music Barry Mann brill building pop Carole King Cynthia Weil Don Kirshner Ellie Greenwich Gerry Goffin Howard Greenfield Jeff Barry Jerry Leiber Litta Eva Mike Stoller Neil Sedaka Paul Simon rock 'n' roll The Brill Building the Drifters

Andrew Goutman

Andrew Goutman is the editor of The Record.

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