Lizzy Evans was raised by a single mother who listened to a lot of Barry Manilow. When she was 6, Evans knew what she wanted for her birthday: membership in the Barry Manilow International Fan Club.
“My childhood years were not perfect and Barry was there,” Evans recalled in an interview. Looking back, the 57-year-old cruise line reservation agent can more clearly see Manilow’s appeal. “He was not a traditional matinee idol. He just seemed like one of us.”
As the 1980s rolled in, Evans’s ardor for the singer faded. “My musical tastes moved on and I grew away from Barry. I still loved him, but I wanted to fit in.” She watched MTV, like her peers, and became a fan of Duran Duran and Culture Club. Manilow “became, in a way, my secret favorite,” she said.
On her 27th birthday, Evans and her roommate took the subway from Queens into Manhattan and went to the TKTS booth in Times Square to buy tickets to a Broadway show. While she was waiting, a man offered to sell her seats to Manilow’s show at Radio City Music Hall that night. She didn’t know she’d end up onstage, singing one of his biggest hits with him.
For a long time, Manilow had a ritual of inviting a fan onstage to duet on “Can’t Smile Without You.” No one has documented when he first did, but it dates at least to 1982.
Evans was seated more than 20 rows back and didn’t think she stood a chance of being chosen. When she saw someone wearing a laminated badge, she told him, “Today is my birthday. If Barry wants to give someone the birthday of a lifetime, you know where to find me.”
The message reached Manilow, and when it was time to pick a partner, he pointed 20 rows back and summoned Evans.
“I practically flew down that aisle,” she said with a laugh. After that night, she never went to another Manilow show. “I got to Valhalla, dude.”
Manilow, 82, has said that “Can’t Smile Without You,” which he didn’t write, is not one of his favorites. For years, he used the song — a deceptively chipper ditty with lyrics about neediness and abandonment — to affirm and amplify a unique bond he has with his fans. (Through his representative, Manilow declined an interview request.)
He’ll revisit that bond as he resumes his “farewell tour” later this month ahead of a planned Las Vegas residency in July. The singer, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in November, had postponed tour stops in April and said in a “Good Morning America” interview this week that he is concerned about the quality of his voice. He’ll release “What a Time,” his first new studio album in 15 years, on June 5.
Showmanship requires a level of illusion, and skeptics might wonder how Manilow, who has more than 10 platinum albums and 25 Top 40 hits, including the No. 1s “Mandy,” “I Write the Songs” and “Looks Like We Made It,” can be seen as “one of us” by fans. The “Can’t Smile” ritual presented him as human (literally touchable) and also gave him a chance to flirt and show his sense of humor: “Nice voice, wrong key,” he sometimes said, or “Almost on key.”
Rabid and passionate Manilow fans absorb a lot of teasing and eye rolls from people who associate their hero with everything uncool and overstated. But in the duet, he has reassured them that he needs their love and support, that the bond is reciprocal.
For decades, the duet followed a pattern. He’d sing a bit of the song, then announce that he was looking for a “brave young woman” to accompany him. “No guys,” he sometimes added. Fans would yell and wave signs, trying to claim his attention. His biographer, Patricia Butler, described the tumult as “a cross between a Texas cattle auction and ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’” Once the duet partner was onstage, he’d hold her hand, then jump up onto the piano and squeeze her between his legs before giving her a chaste goodbye kiss.
On Feb. 6, 2002, when Manilow played Radio City Music Hall, a venue he’s headlined more than 50 times, he forgot to specify that his singing partner should be a woman. It was great news for Alan Charles, who was holding a sign that read “Teased for 27 Years — Make Me Smile.” “How can it be 27 years? I’m only 31,” Manilow quipped. “Oh, it’s a guy,” he added after he saw Charles coming to the stage.
Charles, a 66-year-old New Yorker who sells deregulated energy, said he’s seen about 40 Manilow shows. When he woke up that morning, he had a premonition that defied probability: “I said, ‘I’m going to sing with Barry tonight.’ My wife said, ‘Are you out of your mind?’”
Charles had been in drug rehab for two months the previous fall, relapsed, then went back to treatment for two more months. “There’s a line in the song: ‘If you only knew what I’m going through.’ To sing that with my favorite singer in the world when I’m battling addiction …” His voice cracked, then trailed off. “I’m tearing up now.”
The moment with Manilow helped him stay clean, he said. “It was a motivational thing.”
Lynne Henderson didn’t have a premonition, but her friend Donna Abrams did. Before a Radio City show on March 6, 1993 (like everyone else in this article, she’s memorized the date), Henderson went out to dinner with some fellow Manilow fans at the Magic Pan in Midtown Manhattan, where she drank a Long Island iced tea for the first time. Abrams gave her a fluorescent pink sign that said “Diva in Waiting,” in black letters. Henderson held the sign upside down that night, and it worked.
Henderson, who is 68 and works as an assistant in a nonprofit health system, estimated that she had seen “between 50 and 100” Manilow shows. She has performing experience, including Off Off Broadway shows and a cabaret act of Manilow’s songs she presented at the storied club Don’t Tell Mama, so she was prepared for the spotlight. She was also “slightly lubricated and warm from the Long Island iced tea,” she said.
“Lynne’s pretty good, huh?” Manilow exclaimed. “She sings better than I do!” When the duet was over, a stagehand quickly brought him a VHS copy of Henderson’s appearance, which he signed before it was brought to her. She’s since had it digitized, and the video has 40,000 views on YouTube, where you could fill a whole channel with “I sang with Barry” vérité clips.
Though it’s happened hundreds of times, each duet is unique for the person who did it. “People sometimes pooh-pooh the bonds people have with performers, but it’s real and sometimes can be profound,” Henderson said.
“Sometimes his songs paint him as the romantic underdog. And he’s an underdog as far as people using him as a punchline. I think that’s why he keeps putting out albums — for the underdogs, by the underdog.”
As Evans, said, “Maybe Barry’s fans need a little place in life that’s safe just for us, and no one needs to understand.”
Manilow, who was born Barry Alan Pincus, has described himself as a misfit. He was a shy, introverted, skinny Jewish kid with braces and a big nose, raised in Brooklyn by doting grandparents and an eccentric single mother who forced him to learn the accordion and slept on the couch so he could have the bedroom.
Sometime about 20 years ago, Manilow stopped doing the duet at every show. In its place, he often invited a fan to dance with him during “Could It Be Magic.” That’s how Jennifer Miller came to be wrapped in Manilow’s arms at the Giant Center in Hershey, Pa., on March 17, 2016.
Miller, 52, lives in Bucks County, Pa., and went to her first Manilow concert when she was 5, accompanying her mom. When the singer met Miller and asked what she did for a living, she told him she’s a nurse. “Do you have any Percocet?” he asked. “I have Xanax,” she replied.
“I was going through a pretty bad divorce, lost my best friend to cancer,” Miller said in an interview. “Life was tough.” But she had support from strangers who cared about her simply because she loved Barry Manilow. “Without these people, I don’t know if I would have got through it,” she said. “It’s like a sense of belonging to something that’s good in the world.”
Years later, Miller brought her teenage daughter, Mandy — yes, named for the Manilow hit — to see him, linking three generations.
It was a show at (where else?) Radio City Music Hall on April 21, 2024. Manilow had resumed doing the duet from time to time, so they brought a nearly undeniable sign: “Pick Mandy.” Manilow did as he was asked. He had a little trouble jumping up onto the piano — he was, after all, 80 years old — but she shined.
“I don’t usually meet people who even know who Barry is,” Mandy, now 17, said. “His audience is a lot of, like, moms and grandmas, which is totally OK. That’s where the best music comes from — the older music.”
For now, Mandy Miller is the last person to ever sing the “Can’t Smile Without You” duet with Manilow. She and her mom both say Mandy was a shy person who didn’t like attention. After seeing Manilow, she began writing songs and now sings in a band called Strands.
“I got out of my shell,” Mandy Miller added exuberantly. “I love who it’s made me.”
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