The Brill Building: Assembly-Line Pop

Located at 1619 Broadway in New York City, the Brill Building was the hub of professionally written rock and roll. As the 1960s equivalent of Tin Pan Alley, it reemphasized a specialized division of labour in which professional songwriters worked closely with producers and artists-and-repertoire personnel to match selected artists with appropriate songs.

The professionalization of rock and roll was anticipated in the late 1950s by the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote and produced their biggest hits with the Coasters and the Drifters. While their successors sometimes filled the roles of producer and writer, the Brill Building professionals tended to focus more narrowly on elevating the craft of songwriting. The flagship company of Brill Building pop music (actually located across the street at 1650 Broadway) was Aldon Music, founded by Al Nevins and Don Kirshner. Brill Building-era songwriting teams such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, and Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman were to rock and roll what Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and George and Ira Gershwin were to Tin Pan Alley. The difference was that the writers of Brill Building pop understood the teenage idiom and wrote almost exclusively for a youth audience. Teen idols Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka (who teamed with Howard Greenfield), Gene Pitney, and Bobby Darin also had careers composing Brill Building pop. On the other hand, Aldon writer King went on to achieve stardom as a singer-songwriter in the 1970s.

Working in assembly-line fashion in small rooms containing upright pianos, these writers turned out their share of teen drivel—Connie Francis’s “Stupid Cupid” (Sedaka and Greenfield) and James Darren’s “Her Royal Majesty” (Goffin and King)—but at their best they married the excitement and urgency of rhythm and blues to the brightness of mainstream pop—Goffin and King’s “Up on the Roof” for the Drifters and “A Natural Woman” for Aretha Franklin. Nowhere was this union stronger than in the classic hits of the girl groups of the early 1960s: Goffin and King’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for the Shirelles and “One Fine Day” for the Chiffons and Mann and Weil’s “Uptown” and Pitney’s “He’s a Rebel” for the Crystals. Producer Phil Spector was perhaps the Brill Building’s biggest customer as well as a frequent collaborator. He worked variously with Greenwich and Barry, Goffin and King, and Mann and Weil to cowrite material for the Crystals, the Ronettes, the Dixie Cups, and the Righteous Brothers.

Brill Building professionals often wrote with intelligence and wit but less frequently with substance. As Bob Dylan and the Beatles ushered in an era of artists who wrote more personal and topical material, the Brill Building declined as a force in popular music.