Singer/songwriter/composer/pianist Neil Sedaka started out as teen pop sensation of the ’50s, transitioned to a composer of songs for himself and others in the ’60s, and developed into an international superstar during the ’70s. With millions of records sold, Sedaka has remained a constant force in the music industry for nearly seven decades.

Spotlight Central recently caught up with Neil Sedaka and talked to him about his early years, his rise to fame, and what he’s been up to these days.

Spotlight Central: You were born in Brooklyn and grew up in Brighton Beach, NY. As an elementary-school child, you took piano lessons at Juilliard and practiced for hours each day. In addition, as a youngster, you listened to music on the radio with shows like Make-Believe Ballroom. What kind of music did you enjoy listening to?

Neil Sedaka: Oh, Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, Johnnie Ray, Kay Starr, Les Paul and Mary Ford — you know, the music of the early ‘50s.

Spotlight Central: When you were 13, you were introduced to Howie Greenfield, your 16-year-old neighbor, and you became songwriting partners. At first, you told him “I don’t want to write songs. I don’t know how. I’m going to be a concert pianist!” but the two of you got together and wrote your first song, “My Life’s Devotion.”

Neil Sedaka: My goodness, you did a lot of research — that’s right!

Spotlight Central: Do you remember that song?

Neil Sedaka: 1952, October the 11th. I’ll never forget it. Howie’s mother, Ella Greenfield, heard me playing Chopin and Bach and my other classical piano pieces and she got us together.

And I do remember writing that song. Howie had a wire recorder — it wasn’t even a tape recorder in those days — and the recording wasn’t very good, but when I heard it back I said, “Gee, I can create something out of the air — I can create a song out of the air!” And I listened to my voice, and I was quite astonished.

Spotlight Central: We read that when you were a student at Lincoln High, you auditioned for the Ballyhoo Variety Show where you performed a rock and roll tune which you and Howie had written called “Mr. Moon.” During the first performance, the audience went wild but, evidently, the principal wasn’t pleased with the ruckus and said he didn’t want you perform it again during the second show. What happened?

Neil Sedaka: That was like a scene from a movie. The kids all got together and signed a petition that said they all wanted Neil to do “Mr. Moon” for the second show, and they won out. I played it and, after that, I was a big shot at Lincoln High School — you know, I was able to hang out with the guys in the leather jackets, and at the sweet shop, too, across the street.

Spotlight Central: Eventually, you formed a doo-wop group, The Linc-Tones, which changed its name to The Tokens and went on to have a hit with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” In the meantime, you and Howie went to New York City with hopes of selling a tune you wrote for The Clovers, and Atlantic Records even bought some of your R&B tunes, correct?

Neil Sedaka: For The Clovers, The Cardinals, and The Cookies. Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler heard me playing and they liked what they heard, so I made a demo and they recorded those songs with their R&B artists.

Spotlight Central: Then, Don Kirshner offered you a job writing at his company, Aldon Music, for $50 per week after he heard you performing some other songs you had written.

Neil Sedaka: Yes. Howie and I went in. We knocked at the door and they said, “Come back after lunch, we’re in a meeting” — actually, the meeting was about how they were gonna pay the rent; they had only been opened up for one week and they didn’t know how things were gonna go.

So Howie and I came back after lunch and we played a group of songs including “Stupid Cupid,” and Donny Kirshner said he was a friend of Connie Francis and he drove me to her home. I played her all my ballads — because she had a #1 record, “Who’s Sorry Now,” which was a ballad — but she didn’t like any of them. I said to Howie, “I’m gonna play ‘Stupid Cupid,’” and he said, “Oh, that’s not her style!” I said, “Well, I have the top female vocalist in front of me; I’m gonna try it.” After a few bars, she stopped me and said, “That’s my next record.”

Spotlight Central: And it went right on up to the Top 20!

Neil Sedaka: That’s right; I think it was #14 in Billboard.

Spotlight Central: After that, you signed as a performing artist with RCA Victor and recorded “The Diary,” a composition that was inspired by Connie Francis?

Neil Sedaka: Yes, she used to write in a diary. Al Nevins took me to RCA Victor to audition for Steve Sholes, who was the head of A&R, and who had just signed Elvis Presley from Sun Records. I played “The Diary” for him and he signed me to a recording contract. I ended up having about ten hits in a row — I sold 25 million records from 1958 to 1963, much to the shock of my parents and my teachers at Juilliard.

Spotlight Central: “The Diary” alone sold over a half-million copies, and its success helped you to buy a 1958 Chevy Impala convertible with pre-set buttons on the radio, about which you said you could use to “hear my record on three different stations, one after the other.” How cool was it getting to hear yourself for the first time singing your own song on the radio?

Neil Sedaka: It was a dream come true. I put the top down and I turned the radio all the way up on Kings Highway in Brooklyn so that everybody could hear me singing and driving that Chevy Impala. It was really a dream come true.

Spotlight Central: It’s said that you analyzed a series of #1 records and that’s how you came up with “Oh! Carol,” a song which was your first Top 10 hit and sold over four million copies. Did you really have one of your high school friends in mind when you wrote it?

Neil Sedaka: I dated Carole King — her name was Carol Klein at the time — and, yes, I wrote it for her. We used to hang out, and we dated for about two minutes. We had a mutual admiration — she had a group, The Cosines, and I had my group, The Tokens.

Spotlight Central: In 1961, “Calendar Girl” went to #4 on the charts and you were invited to perform it on The Ed Sullivan Show. “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” was another ’61 hit, and you followed it up with a song for which you created a title and a melody, but which Howie wasn’t much interested in. Eventually he ended up writing the lyrics, you added the “Down dooby-doo down down” intro, and “Breakin’ Up is Hard to Do” became your first #1 record. Part of the production’s appeal, however, was the multiple layers of your vocals on the recording. How did that come about?

Neil Sedaka: I was the first rock and roller to use multiple layers. I was inspired by Les Paul and Mary Ford. Also, the night before the session, I called the arranger and I came up with the “Down dooby-doo down down” to go as an intro and under the whole record as a third voice, and that kind of clinched it.

Spotlight Central: Following the British invasion, you wrote hits for a laundry list of artists including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and many more. You moved to London where you met Elton John, a fan of yours who had listened to your records as a kid. When he heard the music you were doing in London, he signed you to his new American record label, Rocket Records.

Neil Sedaka: Elton John came to my flat in London and I played him some songs I had been writing — “Laughter in the Rain” and “Solitaire” — and he said it was like handing him “gold bricks,” because they were already hits in England.

Spotlight Central: You did two albums for Elton John, including 1974’s Sedaka’s Back which became a global top-seller, and two major singles, “Bad Blood” and, as you mentioned, “Laughter in the Rain,” which went to #1. Not everybody gets a first chance to be a successful artist, but how gratifying was it for you to have a second incarnation as a recording star?

Neil Sedaka: Well, I believe in developing and growing and raising the bar and reinventing Neil Sedaka. It was a time for singer/songwriters in the ’70s — Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Gordon Lightfoot — and I got a new lyricist named Phil Cody who could write in that style. I had to change away from the “Calendar Girls” and the “Breakin’ Ups,” so I wrote and recorded more mature songs. And Sedaka’s Back was a big hit — the album — and “Laughter” went to #1. Elton kept his promise: he promoted the record.

Spotlight Central: On “Laughter in the Rain” — one of our favorite songs — you once talked about using a musical device which you called something like a “heartbreak chord.” It’s the chord you hear following the end of each verse as you shift into the “Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain” chorus — a chord which has a sort of magical lifting quality to it. Did you call it the “heartbreak chord?”

Neil Sedaka: The “drop dead chord.”

Spotlight Central: Yes, the “drop dead chord!” Where did you come up with the idea for that?

Neil Sedaka: Well, listening to music and having a background in classical music, I always felt there should be something unexpected — something emotional — that would pick your ears up and go down your spine. And for [sings] “Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain,” I was in the key of F and I did a B-flat minor 7 chord into A-flat. So the chorus of “Laughter” is in the key of A-flat, but the verse was in F, and then I went to a B-flat minor 7 chord for [sings] “Ooh,” and that got me into the key of A-flat for the chorus. It made the difference.

Spotlight Central: It sure did! In 1975, “Breakin’ Up is Hard to Do,” was re-released as a ballad and it made music history by becoming the first song recorded by the same artist in two different versions to reach #1.

Neil Sedaka: That’s right. I got the idea fiddling at the piano. Lenny Welch was a friend, and he had a record called “Since I Fell For You.” He asked me if I had a follow-up to that record, and I was fooling at the piano and I discovered that “Breakin’ Up” worked as a “gin mill” song — as a ballad. The lyric, certainly — Howie’s lyric — was very conducive to being a ballad.

Spotlight Central: Also in 1975, you earned a Grammy for Record of the Year for writing The Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Tell us about the “Sedaka is back” lyric which we hear on the fade out.

Neil Sedaka: Toni Tennille did it spontaneously! It was my year — I had a few #1s that year, and she just did it spontaneously as a surprise. When she sent me the record, I was knocked out. I thought it was a beautiful sentiment.

Spotlight Central: More recently, in 2009, with the help of your family, you did an album called Waking Up is Hard to Do, a collection of Sedaka hits reinvented as children’s songs. Tell us about that.

Neil Sedaka: My son did some lyrics with me, and my granddaughters were about seven years old, and I had to feed them candy in the studio to get them to do the background doo-wop vocals! I think it was a #1 children’s album; I did that children’s album, and then I did two children’s books, Dinosaur Pet and Waking Up is Hard to Do.

Spotlight Central: You wrote your most recent new songs for your latest studio album, which is from 2016, called I Do It For Applause, right?

Neil Sedaka: The last two albums, I think, were The Real Neil and I Do It For Applause — those were the last songs I wrote, yes.

Spotlight Central: By the time those albums were recorded, you had written over a thousand songs, but at one point, you said, “I don’t think I’ve written my greatest work yet.” What did you mean by that?

Neil Sedaka: Well, after so many songs you have to try something different, and I think that’s when I started writing classical music, where you have much more creative freedom. I did a piano concerto called Manhattan Intermezzo, which I recorded with the London Philharmonic, and then I did a symphony called Joie de Vivre, which was also recorded by the London Philharmonic. There, you can really do more things than with pop songs.

Spotlight Central: In addition to writing for over 2/3 of a century, you’ve been singing for over six decades. We’ve seen you recently in concert, and your voice still sounds great. Do you still sing your songs in the original keys?

Neil Sedaka: One or two I drop a half a tone — [laughs] I’m 81 years old, you know!

Spotlight Central: You’re allowed!

Neil Sedaka: Yeah, I dropped one or two from the Key of F to the Key of E.

Spotlight Central: You still love performing, but with concerts temporarily postponed, you launched a series of free mini-concerts on social media. Tell us more about this.

Neil Sedaka: With this pandemic — with people locked in — I thought it would be a good idea to do mini-concerts, and I think I’m the only artist still doing it for four months straight. Some days, I get 50,000, 60,000 hits from all over the world.

They say music is therapeutic, and I never repeat the same song, except for some of the big hits. I do what I call my “forgotten children” — or my “neglected children” — the songs that were buried in albums and were never played on the radio.

And I get responses from people who were never Neil Sedaka fans saying they’re blown away — they’re new fans — they just can’t believe my body of work. I do Yiddish songs, I do Spanish songs from my albums, I do classical piano music — and it takes me several hours to relearn some of the songs I wrote 50, 60 years ago to get the proper feel and the chords and the sentiment, you know— and even I’m surprised how good some of these songs are!

Spotlight Central: We’ve seen quite a few of your mini-concerts on Facebook, but aren’t there other platforms where can people find them?

Neil Sedaka: Yes, in addition to seeing them on Facebook, they can also find them on Twitter, Instagram, and on my webpage. And addition to my mini-concerts, I’m also doing my own show on Sirius XM ‘50s on 5 radio. I do the Sirius radio show once a month, but it plays about six times during the month. My next new show is on August 21 at 8pm Eastern where I talk about the Brill Building writers. For the show, I pick my own records, and I talk about the musicians and the songwriters — in addition to how the songs were written and why — and it’s been getting a great response.

Spotlight Central: The show is called In the Key of Neil, correct?

Neil Sedaka: In the Key of Neil, yes. Also, I’m now a part of this family called Cameo, where people request me to do “Happy birthday” or “Happy anniversary” videos, and I mention their names and the dates of their anniversaries or their birthdays. People do them as gifts for their mothers, fathers, grandmothers, etc., at cameo.com, and it’s been very nice, too.

Spotlight Central: Is there anything else you’d like to add — or anything you’d like to say to your fans who look forward to seeing you perform live again?

Neil Sedaka: Certainly I’m happy to be able to entertain them during this lockdown, and it’s nice getting so many wonderful comments from fans all over the world.

Spotlight Central: We understand that you’re scheduled to perform again in our area at BergenPAC in Englewood, NJ in October of 2021. What are your feelings about being back in front of a live audience?

Neil Sedaka: Thanks to my mini-concerts, I’ve made so many thousands of new fans who were never really Neil Sedaka fans before — it’s quite incredible — but I love the electricity of being in front of a live audience, so I’m looking forward to that. It’s an adrenaline rush which is second to none. It’s really exciting!

To learn more about Neil Sedaka, please go to neilsedaka.com.