How The Brill Building Changed Pop Music

Source: History Facts, Kerry Hinton
Photo: Graphic House/Archive Photos via Getty Images

The Brill Building isn’t just an art deco structure in midtown Manhattan — it’s also the name of a musical genre. Throughout the early and mid-1960s, the “Brill Building sound” became synonymous with groundbreaking pop music. The heyday of the Brill Building era was short-lived, but in one six-year span, the songwriters, arrangers, musicians, and producers behind this sound contributed to hundreds of Billboard Hot 100 hits, including “Stand By Me” (Ben E. King, 1962), “One Fine Day” (the Chiffons, 1963), and “Be My Baby” (the Ronettes, 1963).

Located at 1619 Broadway in New York City, the Brill Building was a hub of songwriters, record labels, and recording studios, all under one roof. It built on the tradition of the “Tin Pan Alley” district before it — a concentration of music publishers and studios in a strip of Manhattan that dominated the music industry in the big-band era. But while their downtown predecessors were mainly concerned with the profits produced by pumping out sheet music for radio hits, the writers and producers at the Brill Building were also on a mission of artistic idealism. Their compositions drew inspiration from classical music, Latin music, traditional Black gospel, and rhythm and blues to create songs that appealed to an audience already hungry for the new sound of rock ’n’ roll. The assembled talent was a once-in-a-generation roster of songwriters, including Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and Neil Diamond. Together, they produced sophisticated songs that were directly aimed at a new, youthful generation and a powerful rising subculture: teenagers.By the mid-’60s, an increasing number of artists — such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan — began composing and playing their own material, making the songwriter-for-hire less of a necessity. As Dylan wrote in 1985, “Tin Pan Alley is gone. I put an end to it. People can record their own songs now.” This may be true, but the creators behind the Brill Building sound helped make the ascent of these singer-songwriters possible. Here are five ways the Brill Building shaped popular music in the 20th century.

It Pioneered “Assembly-Line Pop”

The Brill Building employed a model of vertical integration that supervised every phase of a song’s life cycle, from production to distribution, all under one roof. The 11 floors of 1619 Broadway and a few surrounding buildings became a one-stop shop where a songwriter could pen a would-be hit, sell it to a publisher, find a band, and cut a demo. Songs could even be played for radio promoters in the building to garner airplay. This new type of streamlined hitmaking — often called “assembly line pop” — gave publishers and producers a huge pool of material to choose from and encouraged creative collaboration, merging art and commerce in a new way.

It Created Sophisticated Music

At the Brill Building, songcraft mattered. Some of the most interesting and popular songs of the era were written at Aldon Music, one of the music publishing companies in the building. Its founders, Al Nevins and Don Kirshner (“Al” and “Don”), had a plan: to take the spirit of classic Tin Pan Alley songwriting (catchy melodies with commercial appeal) and create well-crafted songs aimed at young people, an increasingly lucrative market. Kirshner had already enjoyed some success writing jingles with his high-school friend Bobby Darin, and after acquiring the talents of the experienced songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (the writers behind “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock”), he convinced the more experienced Nevins to partner with him.The music may have been aimed at the youth market, but Aldon’s songwriters employed lyrics that addressed bleak social conditions (“We Gotta Get Out of This Place”) and tragedy (“Leader of the Pack”). The arrangements and production were innovative as well. Songs such as the echo-drenched Phil Spector-produced “River Deep, Mountain High” (performed by Tina Turner) showcased new directions in arrangements and production techniques.
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It Showcased Young Talent

The Brill Building sound was created for young people, by young people. In 1962, the oldest of Aldon’s songwriters was just 26 years old. Many of the Brill Building songwriters were only slightly older than their songs’ subjects, making their perspective especially accessible to young audiences. At the age of 20, Carole King wrote the No. 1 hit “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” — recorded and released by the Shirelles in 1960 — with her husband Gerry Goffin. Little Eva, their babysitter, sang the smash hit “The Loco-Motion” (which King and Goffin also wrote) when she was just 17.

It Boosted Women Songwriters

Before the Brill Building era, popular songwriting was basically a boys’ club. This changed with the arrival of female songwriters such as Carole King, Ellie Greenwich (“Then He Kissed Me,” 1963), and Cynthia Weil (“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” 1964), although their husbands were named first in the songwriting credits. In addition to writing dozens of hits, these women proved that they were equally capable in the recording studio as arrangers and producers.

It Helped Integrate Popular Music

The Brill Building songwriters made rock ’n’ roll popular with mainstream teenage America. Although the majority of writers were white, they all had been influenced by the melting pot of musical styles they heard on the fire escapes and in the clubs of New York City. The result was a hybrid sound that blended genres and often had crossover appeal, finding success on both pop and R&B charts. Songwriters often specifically wrote for Black female artists such as Dionne Warwick, the Ronettes, and the Crystals, using arrangements that gave their music mainstream appeal. This unique musical style united listeners from different backgrounds and opened people’s eyes to the possibility of a biracial popular culture.

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