Why 1973 was a particularly Jewish year in pop music
Fifty years ago, Bette Midler, Kiss, Steely Dan and the Simons (both Carly and Paul) stormed the pop charts
Pop Music
The Latest
-
Music -
Music Did hubris and ridiculous lyrics doom what could have been a rock ‘n’ roll sensation?
T. Rex's 'Tanx' should have been a smash in 1973. What did Marc Bolan get wrong?
-
Music The great Burt Bacharach album that nobody’s talking about
Though it stalled on the charts, 'Reach Out' is a sumptuous 11-course aural feast
-
Culture Pop hitmaker Burt Bacharach dies at 94
His songs defined the '60s, and our memory of them
-
Yiddish World VIDEO: In honor of Petula Clark’s 90th birthday — a hilarious Yiddish take on the song ‘Downtown’
The clever lyrics in this clip, subtitled in English, were written by the bestselling author of 'Born to Kvetch,' Michael Wex
-
Culture Barry Manilow on dueling cantors, Levy’s Rye and his musical’s New York debut
Barry Manilow never meant to become a pop star, and his Grammy, Emmy and Tony-winning career as a songwriter is a source of perennial tsuris for his lyric-writing partner Bruce Sussman. If you ask them, “Mandy” came, gave and (forget what you heard) did some taking. That breakout hit diverted the pair’s original ambition: writing…
-
Yiddish World How a Yiddish folksong appeared on a 1967 American pop album
At the height of his success in 1967, Jay Black, lead singer of the pop band, Jay and the Americans, recorded a popular Yiddish folk song and managed to convince his record label, United Artists, to include it on the B-side of their album, “Try Some of This!” The story, first published by the Forward…
-
Culture Finally, we can move on from ‘Dreidel Dreidel’ — a true Hanukkah bop has dropped
In the past few weeks, I’ve written about everything wrong with Hanukkah today — kitschy merchandise, Christmasification, the Maccabees. So as we approach the end of the eight nights, I wanted to finish on a sweeter note: a pop anthem made for the holiday that, in my humble opinion, does everything right. “Hanukkah” comes from…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV ‘Bojack Horseman’ creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg on his new, ‘unapologetically Jewish’ family affair
- 2
News ADL chief attacks Zohran Mamdani, but gets his facts wrong
- 3
Film & TV Who is Marty Reisman, the Jewish ping-pong star who inspired Timothée Chalamet’s new movie?
- 4
News Meet the Jewish senator emerging as Chuck Schumer’s heir apparent
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Reform movement urges against death penalty for alleged Capital Jewish Museum shooter
-
Sports ‘Chetanyahu?’: NBA star sucked into Gaza culture wars over workout video
-
Opinion Following Laura Loomer’s lead, the US is repeating an egregious Holocaust-era mistake
-
Culture For this historian, anti-Zionism is part of a hallowed Jewish tradition
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
