TOP 40 DEBUT: February 2, 1980
PEAK POSITION: #20 (March 1, 1980)
We tend to remember the Eighties through a filter, a lens of one-hit wonders and music videos where the entire decade transforms into a gleaming landscape of new-wave, electropop, and angular haircuts. (And, ahem, spandex and synthesizers.) But we forget the dregs: the faceless radio fodder, the boring-but-inexplicably-huge hits, and especially all the easy-listening flotsam clogging Billboard’s Hot 100 in the years before MTV truly began affecting radio playlists. This is the era when Christopher Cross won multiple Grammies for his smooth brand of studio pop, when Air Supply weaponized soft rock with ballad after bland ballad. And they were far from the worst offenders. Relics from the previous decade turned out to have amazing staying power in a world where adult contemporary hits consistently crossed over to the pop charts. Would it surprise you to learn that Barry Manilow hit the Top 40 ten separate times between 1980 and 1984? That’s more than Chris Cross, more than Dan Fogelberg, more than even fellow Seventies relic Neil Diamond. (Diamond will still appear on this site nine different times, for those keeping score.)
None of Manilow’s Eighties singles, save one, cracked the Top 10. Of the rest, few would ever be included among his signature songs, nor remembered by anyone outside his blue-haired fanbase. Yet they all made an impression on the charts. They all had their (mercifully brief) moment in the sun. And they will each get their own separate entry, eventually. “When I Wanted You” is merely the first in a series of instantly forgettable “hits” I’ll be discussing in the years to come. Like soap scum, Manilow’s Eighties work lingers in the grout of the Billboard Hot 100, no matter how hard you try to scrub it away.
Barry Alan Pincus got his start writing advertising jingles in the late Sixties, providing the lyrics—and the voice—for numerous stuck-in-your-brain bits from State Farm, Band-Aid, and McDonald’s. In 1971, Manilow began playing piano behind Bette Midler in New York’s gay bathhouses; two years later, he scored a Grammy nomination for his production work on her debut album, The Divine Miss M. But it was under the tutelage of legendary record mogul Clive Davis that his career truly blossomed. Manilow was the first major artist signed to Davis’ new label Artista Records in 1974, and over the next four decades, he would generate thirty gold or platinum-selling albums for the company—along with 49 charting singles and thirteen Adult Contemporary #1’s. After Whitney Houston, he was far-and-away the biggest act Arista ever had.
Starting with his first hit, the monstrous “Mandy” (a 5), Manilow was an instant critical punching bag, but he was also huge—like, across-the-board, three-#1-singles-in-three-years huge. His brand of aggressive schlock quickly found an audience, slotting nicely alongside similar pabulum from Captain & Tennille, Neil Sedaka, and Tony Orlando & Dawn. (Top 40 radio in the Seventies was way cruddier than history remembers.) It didn’t matter that Manilow could often be a gifted songwriter, a talented musician, and a solid vocalist. That hammy, unsubtle showman persona overshadowed—and negated—everything else.
Unlike Diamond, Manilow never had an early “cool” period of respectability. From the outset, he treated every song like a show tune. His default setting was “overblown.” He famously did not write “I Write The Songs” (a 2), or “Looks Like We Made It” (a 4), or so many of his other signature pieces. Placed along this continuum, “When I Wanted You” sounds exactly like you’d expect it to sound, and does exactly what you think it does. If you’re a true believer, the song is absolute perfection; if Manilow’s whole shtick sets your teeth on edge, then it’s practically unlistenable.
“When I Wanted You” was written by Gino Cunico, initially appearing on his 1976 self-titled debut for Arista. Cunico had grown up in Sydney, Australia, where he played guitar for local heroes the Executives before immigrating to America at age twenty. He signed a deal with Columbia Records in ‘74, only to follow Clive Davis to Arista before recording anything. Gino Cunico followed a template similar to Manilow’s own—inoffensive covers delivered in inoffensive fashion—only with less showboating, less sap, and ultimately way less sales. Cunico would never make another record.
But one of his few original songs on the album turned out to have legs. Perry Como cut a version of “When I Wanted You” in 1978. So did Engelbert Humperdinck. (So did a duo called the Addrisi Brothers, who I’d never heard of before and will never hear from again.) All three covers hit the same beats as the original, but none found a way to truly harness the white-bread majesty lurking inside. Davis understood that potential. Davis smelled a hit. And he knew Arista’s golden boy could knock this fat, heavy, hanging softball of a song straight out of the park.
I’m not gonna lie: As mawkish ballads go, “When I Wanted You” absolutely gets the job done. There’s a nice contrast between the quiet stasis of the verses and the epic descending chords that follow. The chorus serves up low-hanging fruit via a melody that’s full of huge, but not impossibly high, notes; it’s practically impossible to screw up. Cunico was, at best, an anonymous singer trapped inside a predictable production, yet his original still carries a certain grandeur, like Nilsson’s “Without You” reassembled from second-hand parts. Manilow could never hit the heights of Harry Nilsson, but he should’ve run circles around Gino Cunico. So why is his version so much worse?
Some of that blame must be shared with Ron Dante, Manilow’s longtime co-producer going back to his first album in ’73. (Dante’s big break was singing lead for the cartoon group the Archies on their #1 hit “Sugar, Sugar.” That one’s a 10.) The pair had a process: Smooth off the edges, pile on the melodrama, and cook until everything turns to overproduced mush. For years, that formula worked. But it also resulted in some legitimately ugly arrangements.
“When I Wanted You” kicks off with cheap synthesized piano that immediately undercuts Manilow from the outset. That’s followed by layers of vocal overdubs, and more keyboards, and a barely discernible orchestra. Everything is smothered in pounds of reverb. When the drums finally enter, they set up the chorus with a big, booming fill and then just… stop. There’s no inertia, no forward momentum. Just a choir of disembodied voices worshiping Manilow as their satin-suited god.
And dear Lord, the key changes. Look, I get it: Barry loves key changes like a fat kid loves cake. He loves them like Kanye loves Kanye. A Manilow song without a key change is like KISS without the makeup; the music might sound the same, but the fans still feel cheated. So I’m not criticizing Manilow for being on-brand, especially when Cunico laid the groundwork by baking a modulation into his original version. But at least that one—which doesn’t arrive until the final chorus—felt earned. By contrast, Manilow’s first key change comes at the halfway mark. He delivers the second one thirty seconds later. And when it crashes in, directly on the heels of a rare break in the bombast, the moment is so completely ruined that I could only throw up my hands and laugh. Manilow took a decent song and broke it. He broke me, too.
As usual, the commercial instincts of Clive Davis turned out to be spot-on. “When I Wanted You” became another huge adult-contemporary hit for Manilow, topping that particular chart in both the United States and Canada during the first months of 1980. On a positive note, the single’s success allowed Cunico to keep working in the industry; he would go on to place songs with acts like GQ and Sheena Easton before transitioning into artist management by decade’s end. That’s a pretty good ending for a guy whose own rock n’ roll dreams effectively blew up before the age of 27. It’s also better than the other ending Cunico got: watching the best song he ever wrote get ruined forever by Barry Manilow.
GRADE: 2/10
BONUS BITS: Here’s a piece of the Family Guy episode “Back To The Woods” that confirms Seth MacFarlane loves Manilow way more than I do.