{"id":41184,"date":"2026-02-28T08:57:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T13:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=41184"},"modified":"2026-02-28T08:57:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T13:57:23","slug":"rip-neil-sedaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=41184","title":{"rendered":"RIP: Neil Sedaka"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Neil Sedaka died yesterday at the age of 86.\u00a0 No cause of death was given.<\/p>\n

Neil Sedaka was a singer and songwriter who graduated high school at the age of 17 and began his professional career in music the following year.\u00a0 Although Neil Sedaka was a founding member of The Tokens, he soon departed for a solo career.\u00a0 Hits quickly followed.\u00a0 From 1958 to 1963, Mr. Sedaka charted 14 top 30 hits.\u00a0 During this same period, Neil Sedaka wrote or co-wrote hits recorded by other artists including Connie Francis, The Everly Brothers, The Monkees, The 5th Dimension and Tom Jones just to name a few.<\/p>\n

Although Mr. Sedaka’s singing career in the US dipped in the mid 60s, he continued to have a strong career as a songwriter and singer overseas.\u00a0 In 1975, Neil Sedaka returned to the US charts with the #1 hit, “Laughter in the Rain”.<\/p>\n

Although Mr. Sedaka officially retired from songwriting in 2022 and sold his music catalog in 2024, he continued to make live appearances and perform on social media with his last outing taking place in December 2025.<\/p>\n

Some of Mr. Sedaka’s greatest hits include: Breaking Up is Hard to Do; Bad Blood; Laughter in the Rain<\/em> and Calendar Girl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Hits written or co-written for others include: “Love Will Keep Us Together”<\/em> \u2013 Captain & Tennille; “Ring Ring”<\/em> by ABBA; “Where the Boys Are”<\/em> \u2013 Connie Francis; “Lonely Night (Angel Face)”<\/em> \u2013 Captain & Tennille; “Crying in the Rain”<\/em> \u2013 The Everly Brothers; “Workin’ on a Groovy Thing”<\/em> \u2013 The 5th Dimension; “Puppet Man”<\/em> \u2013 Tom Jones; “When Love Comes Knockin’ (At Your Door)”<\/em> – The Monkees; “The Girl I Left Behind Me”<\/em> – The Monkees; “I Go Ape”<\/em> – The Monkees and “Rainy Jane”<\/em> – Davy Jones.<\/p>\n

What an amazing career!\u00a0 Neil Sedaka was a wonderful singer and songwriter.\u00a0 His performances always left me smiling.<\/p>\n

Out thoughts and prayers go out to Neil Sedaka’s family, friends and fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil Sedaka died yesterday at the age of 86.\u00a0 No cause of death was given. Neil Sedaka was a singer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,64,57,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-music","category-rip","category-trivia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41185,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41184\/revisions\/41185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}