Neil Sedaka, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do singer and pop song hitmaker, dies aged 86 | Neil Sedaka

Neil Sedaka, the singer-songwriter behind Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Oh! Carol, Calendar Girl and Bad Blood, as well as many hit songs performed by other artists such as Stupid Cupid and Love Will Keep Us Together, died at the age of 86.

A representative confirmed his death to Variety on Friday, hours after he was reportedly taken to a hospital in Los Angeles. No cause of death was stated.

In a statement from Sedaka’s family, “Our family is devastated by the sudden death of our beloved husband, father and grandfather, Neil Sedaka.” The statement was included. “A true rock and roll legend, an inspiration to millions, but most importantly, an incredible person who will be deeply missed, at least for those of us who were lucky enough to know him.”

Born in 1939, Sedaka was a child piano prodigy: He was nine years old when he received a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York. “Music is so much a part of me that my parents told me when I was a baby that I wouldn’t eat unless there was music playing on the radio,” he told the Guardian in 2012.

He first studied to become a concert pianist, then realized his talent for singing and writing pop music. When he was 13, he befriended his 16-year-old neighbor, Howard Greenfield, and they began writing songs together; this was the beginning of a songwriting partnership that would last more than a decade. Sedaka was briefly invited to play at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow in 1956, but later declined the invitation on the grounds that “they had heard my name associated with the spelling of American capitalist rock’n’roll.”

Sedaka became a teen idol during the pre-rock ‘n’ roll era of assembly-line pop songwriting, appearing on 1959’s Oh! Carol, Calendar Girl and Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen: This time, she once joked, “When we ran out of lyrics, we used doo-bee-doo.” Paul Simon, whom Sedaka dated in high school, was one of many musicians who attended the Brill Building, the Manhattan songwriting center that also nurtured the early careers of Burt Bacharach and Carole King.

Between 1959 and 1963, Sedaka sold more than 25 million records and was nominated for his first Grammy in 1962. However, the arrival of the British invasion led by the Beatles nearly ended his career. “I worked very little between 1963 and 1975. The Beatles had come to New York and changed music; all the solo singers were unemployed,” he once said.

Sedaka was a major influence on Elton John, with whom he was briefly signed to the Rocket label in the 1970s. In addition to his own hits, Sedaka wrote many songs for other artists, including Connie Francis’ 1958 hit Stupid Cupid and Captain and Tennille’s Love Will Keep Us Together. In 1973, he collaborated with Abba to write the English lyrics for their hit Ring Ring, and wrote songs for Rosemary Clooney, Patsy Cline, Engelbert Humperdinck, the Carpenters and Cher.

Sedaka has continued his six-decade career touring and performing. “You have to give up your privacy,” he famously told the Guardian in 2012. “But the good thing is you can get a table in a restaurant or a seat in the theatre.”