Barry Manilow, "New York City Rhythm"

It's a Barry Manilow twin-spin!

Yup, I'm revisiting the Brooklyn balladeer, because (a) I spent my to- and from-work commutes listening to the box set I mentioned yesterday, and (b) as a result, I've been thinking about the identity of being a New Yorker.

Barry's about as quintessentially New York as a musician can be: he embraced each aspect of the city's treasured musical history in his '70s albums, from show tunes to standards to swinging jazz to Tin Pan Alley to Brill Building to showbizzy schmaltz and even, in the case of "New York City Rhythm", to Nuyorican discotheque moves. The song's subject matter is quintessentially New York, too: defiant survival by sheer determination. In New York, you really can go as far as your ambition will take you, and it's all just a question of what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of that ambition.

You can't record stuff this unabashedly corny any more, and it's to our collective detriment that that's the case; a big part of Barry Manilow's appeal for me is his unselfconscious headlong diving into his arrangements and presentations, and the fact that his songs were about the songs rather than about him. I've connected with many of his tunes over the years, and today find a certain sense of triumph in what "New York City Rhythm" represents, even if what it represents is often cutthroat, often heartless, often insular, and often solitary. In New York City like nowhere else, armies of one can go quite far indeed.