Neil Sedaka Interview

The pop veteran with his twin granddaughters, Charlotte and Amanda.

Like many of you, I listened to Madonna and Michael Jackson when I was growing up. But some of my favorite songs topped the charts long before I was born. Thanks to my father, I knew every word to ’50s and ’60s hits like “Rockin’ Robin,” “Stop! In the Name of Love” and “Calendar Girl.” Neil Sedaka was one of his favorite artists: My dad, like Sedaka, grew up in Brighton Beach; he even interviewed the star for his school paper in 1961. When I was seven, I sang along to Sedaka’s clever lyrics and catchy melodies. Turns out I wasn’t his only second-generation fan.

“My songs always appealed to kids because they have memorable phrases,” says the pop music icon, who spoke to Time Out Kids about his new children’s album, Waking Up Is Hard to Do. “They were called ‘sandwich songs.’ The tra-la-la-la-la’s were the bread, and the lyrics were the meat.” After becoming a grandfather, Papa Neil (as he’s known to his three grandkids) decided to rework his legendary tunes for teeny-weeny boppers. “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen” morphed into “Happy Birthday, Number Three,” a sweet sing-along about a baby growing up. The upbeat title track, based on 1962’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” talks about getting ready for school instead of getting over a significant other ("You slept your night, now it’s morning time ⁄ That’s the time to rise and shine ⁄ Don’t you cry and don’t be blue ⁄ Wakin’ up is hard to do”).

Sedaka recruited two younger generations of his family for this project. Son Marc cowrote four of the songs, and his five-year-old granddaughters, Charlotte and Amanda, sing backup. “They have short attention spans, so I had to bribe them with cookies in the studio,” says Sedaka. “They think every papa can sing and write songs.”

While you won’t hear three-year-old grandson Michael on the album, he did serve as inspiration. “He sings ‘Breaking Up Is Hard to Do’ from start to finish, and he always performs it for friends,” Sedaka says. So, is the little guy pleased with the new version? “He’s fascinated by it, but he still likes Papa’s original songs.”

Waking Up Is Hard to Do is out now.

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