{"id":474025,"date":"2026-06-03T11:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T11:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/474025\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T11:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T11:47:11","slug":"barry-manilow-reflects-on-lung-cancer-and-his-album-what-a-time-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/474025\/","title":{"rendered":"Barry Manilow reflects on lung cancer and his album ‘What a Time’ : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Barry<\/p>\n

\n Barry Manilow<\/p>\n

Christopher DeVargas\/Stiletto Entertainment<\/p>\n

hide caption\n <\/p>\n

toggle caption<\/p>\n

Christopher DeVargas\/Stiletto Entertainment<\/p>\n

At almost 83 years old, Barry Manilow’s voice is raspier than his fans remember.<\/p>\n

“It’s only been four months and they say it takes a year before you come back from something like that,” he told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep<\/a> about his recovery from lung cancer surgery.<\/p>\n

As if that diagnosis wasn’t scary enough, the singer says surgeons had to pass through his vocal cords on their way to excising a portion of his lung. “They promised me that they were very gentle and they didn’t hurt my vocal cords,” he said. “But I’m not so sure.”<\/p>\n

Manilow is busy rehabilitating his singing voice in the hopes of getting back on stage again, in support of a new album recorded before his surgery, What a Time<\/a>. It’s his first collection of new songs in almost 15 years.<\/p>\n

“This album is filled with my favorite, favorite songs that I’ve ever written,” Manilow said. “And I’m so happy there’s now a place for them.”<\/p>\n

The orchestration is classic Manilow \u2014 instantly familiar for any fan of his 1970’s work \u2014 but surprisingly, that wasn’t how the album’s writing got started.<\/p>\n

“I actually tried to write in the style of Billie Eilish,” he said. He abandoned his attempt to modernize with the admission: “To my ear, I can’t find the chorus. I can’t find the hook.”<\/p>\n

Before his fame, Manilow learned how to write a hook (and pay the bills) by penning jingles for commercials, many of which are still used today. State Farm Insurance, Pepsi, McDonalds and Band-Aid all benefited from Manilow’s earworms.<\/p>\n

“It taught me how to write a pop song because the rules are the same,” he remembered. “You’ve got to grab the listener within the first 15 seconds\u2026 I attribute my ability to actually write pop songs because I had a couple of years of writing jingles.”<\/p>\n

What a Time will be released on June 5.<\/p>\n

The audio version of this story was produced by Paige Waterhouse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barry Manilow Christopher DeVargas\/Stiletto Entertainment hide caption toggle caption Christopher DeVargas\/Stiletto Entertainment At almost 83 years old, Barry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-474025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}