Melissa Manchester

Melissa Manchester, born February 15, 1951, in the Bronx, New York, is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and Broadway performer whose career has spanned more than five decades. She was raised in a musical household; her father, David Manchester, served as a bassoonist with the New York Metropolitan Opera for thirty years, and her mother, Ruth Manchester, founded her own clothing firm, Ruth Manchester Ltd. The family is of Jewish origin.

Manchester began her musical training early, studying piano and harpsichord at the Manhattan School of Music. By age fifteen she was recording commercial jingles, and at seventeen she joined Chappell Music as a staff writer while enrolled at Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts. At nineteen she studied songwriting at New York University under Paul Simon. Working the Manhattan club circuit brought her into contact with Barry Manilow, a fellow jingle singer, who introduced her to Bette Midler. In 1971, Manchester became a founding member of the Harlettes, Midler's backing vocal group, which she co-created with Manilow. That same year she made a brief speaking appearance on the National Lampoon album Radio Dinner, voicing "Yoko Ono" on the track "Magical Misery Tour" and singing on "Deteriorata."

Her debut album, Home to Myself, arrived in 1973, with many of its songs co-written alongside Carole Bayer Sager. The 1975 follow-up album Melissa yielded her first top-ten hit, "Midnight Blue," which spent seventeen weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number six on August 9, 1975. Her 1976 album Better Days and Happy Endings introduced "Come in from the Rain," a song that, though never released as a single, attracted cover versions from artists including Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, Mel Tormé, and Carmen McRae, among others.

Manchester collaborated with Kenny Loggins to co-write his 1978 hit duet with Stevie Nicks, "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'," a song she later recorded herself for her 1979 Melissa Manchester album. That same year her rendition of Peter Allen's "Don't Cry Out Loud" reached number ten on the charts and earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Female Vocal Performance. Also in 1979, she performed two Academy Award-nominated songs on the Oscar telecast: "I'll Never Say Goodbye" from The Promise and "Through the Eyes of Love," the theme from Ice Castles.

Her most commercially successful chart entry came in 1982 with "You Should Hear How She Talks About You," which reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and number four in Cash Box. The recording won the 1983 Grammy Award for Best Pop Female Vocal Performance, besting nominations held by Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, Juice Newton, and Laura Branigan. In 1985 she signed with MCA Records and released the album Ma+hematics, and she continued placing singles on the Adult Contemporary charts throughout the decade, including a 1989 update of Dionne Warwick's "Walk on By" drawn from her Mika/Polygram album Tribute, which paid homage to singers who shaped her style.

Alongside her recording work, Manchester pursued an active acting career. She appeared with Bette Midler in the film For the Boys, guest-starred on the television series Blossom, and co-wrote and starred in the musical I Sent a Letter to My Love, based on the Bernice Rubens novel, with bookwriter-lyricist Jeffrey Sweet. She appeared on The Muppet Show in 1980, made a guest appearance on the CBS daytime drama Search for Tomorrow, and later appeared as herself on ABC's General Hospital. In 1990 her recording of "I Wish I Knew" was featured over the opening credits of the CBS drama The Trials of Rosie O'Neill, and in 1991 she sang the national anthem at Game 6 of the World Series. In 1992 she recorded the title song for the animated film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, written by the Sherman Brothers and performed with the London Symphony Orchestra. She also composed and recorded the soundtrack for the direct-to-video Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure in 2001.

On Broadway, Manchester's stage work spanned from 1987 to 2023. She starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber — Music of the Night and in the play The Song and Dance Man, and she appeared in Funny Girl. In April 2007 she returned to the stage in the Chicago production of HATS! The Musical, contributing two songs to the show alongside Sharon Vaughn.

Manchester released When I Look Down That Road in 2004, her first studio album in nine years, and toured in support of it. In 2007 she recorded a duet with Barry Manilow covering Carole King's "You've Got a Friend" for Manilow's album The Greatest Songs of the Seventies. Her 2011 cameo in the independent film Dirty Girl featured her as a pianist accompanying the lead character's performance of "Don't Cry Out Loud," with five of her songs appearing on the film's soundtrack. Her twentieth studio album, You Gotta Love the Life, was released on February 10, 2015, following an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign; it reached number seventeen on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. The album's lead single, "Feelin' for You," co-written with Sara Niemietz and featuring a solo by Keb' Mo', debuted at number two on the Smooth Jazz charts on January 9, 2015. A second single, "Big Light," featured a duet with Al Jarreau and was released for radio on June 15, 2015. In 2017, more than twenty-five years after Tribute, Manchester released The Fellas, a collection of covers honoring male musical influences including Tony Bennett.