THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

539-Neil Sedaka-Next Door to an Angel.

1962-Number 29 single.

Best Bit-At 2.04. There are worse things you could live next door to, how about Alice for instance.Neil Sedaka was born on March 13th, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York City, United States. His success can be split into two eras, the early 1960’s, and his comeback in the the mid 1970’s. It was the changing sounds in Pop Music, with the emergence of the Beatles, and the ‘British Invasion,’ which primarily caused Sedaka to drop out of the limelight.Neil Sedaka started out in 1955 as a founding member of a ‘Doo-Wop’ style group, who would go on to become ‘The Tokens,’ having four top 40 hit singles after Sedaka had left in 1958, including the Billboard Number 1 ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight,’ in 1961.For the majority of his career Sedaka has had songwriting partners, the first was the lyricist Howard Greenfield (1936-1986.) The two first met when Sedaka was 13, and Greenfield was 16, and both were employed in the late 1950’s as composers at the ‘Brill Building,’ in the New York City borough of Manhattan.

Arguably Sedaka found even greater success in the 1970’s, with the release of his 1972 Album ‘Solitaire.’ The Album had 11 tracks, with seven of them written by Sedaka, and his new writing partner Phil Cody. The four musicians on the Album playing alongside Sedaka would go on to form the very successful band 10CC (see also best songs 663 and 154.)

‘Next Door to an Angel’ was co-written by Neil Sedaka, and Howard Greenfield, and is one of his 21 Billboard top 40 hits between 1958-1980. The duo also had great success with songs they had written, being performed by other artists. In 1975 ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ was that years best selling song in America, when recorded by ‘The Captain & Tenille’, and in the UK in 2005 ‘Is This the Way to Amarillo’ which was recorded by Tony Christie, featuring Peter Kay, for ‘Comic Relief’, became the best selling song of the new millennium up to that point.

‘Since I saw her this morning I’m on cloud number nine. There’a a garden of Eden at the house next door to mine.’