Manilow has recorded and released 51 Top 40 singles on the Adult Contemporary Chart , including 13 that hit number one, 28 that appeared within the top ten, and 36 that reached the top twenty. Manilow has released 13 platinum and six multi-platinum albums. In the s, Frank Sinatra predicted: "He's next. As well as producing and arranging albums for himself and other artists, Manilow has written and performed songs for musicals, films, and commercials for corporations such as McDonald's , Pepsi Cola , and Band-Aid.
He has been nominated for a Grammy Award winning once as a producer, arranger and performer a total of fifteen times and in every decade from to Barry's mother made his father change his name to Pincus, which was the name of a Jewish uncle of his father from the s. Manilow grew up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn and graduated in from the now-defunct Eastern District High School.
Afterward he studied musical theater at Juilliard Performing Arts School. During this time, Manilow began work as a commercial jingle writer and singer, which continued through the remainder of the s. When accepting the award, he stated that he learned the most about making pop music by working for three or four years as a writer in the jingle industry.
Manilow recorded and accompanied artists on the piano for auditions and performances in the first two years of the s. Three of the tracks were: "Morning", a ballad; "Amy", a psychedelic-influenced pop song; and an early, uptempo version of his own co-composition with Orlando , " Could It Be Magic ". Neither of two singles released impacted on the charts. Bette Midler saw Manilow's act in and chose the young musician as her pianist at the Continental Baths in New York City that year, [ 35 ] and subsequently as a producer on both her debut and second record albums The Divine Miss M and Bette Midler After the Featherbed singles failed to impact on the music charts, in July , Bell Records released the album Barry Manilow , which offered an eclectic mix of piano-driven pop and guitar-driven rock music, including a song called "I Am Your Child", which Manilow had composed with Marty Panzer.
Among other songs on the album were Jon Hendricks ' vocalese jazz standard "Cloudburst", most successfully recorded by his group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in , and a slower-tempo version of "Could It Be Magic".
