Brill Building Songwriters:

Top 20

The Brill Building is in Manhattan, New York, at 1619 Broadway in the historic Tin Pan Alley neighborhood. In the early 1960s, it was considered the center of the American music industry with 165 music businesses contained there by 1962. The “Brill Building sound” was significant in shaping music after rock and roll’s first wave. It was a throwback to the pre-rock era when the song was more important than the singer. In fact, a specific singer could generally be easily replaced with another singer.

Of the famous songwriters who emerged from there, Carole King said, “Every day we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky. You’d sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubby hole composing a song exactly like yours.” ^WK

See other lists of Acts/Music Makers by Categories.