'I'm a Believer': A Playlist for the Late, Great Don Kirshner

If you think Kirshner was just some guy who Paul Shaffer impersonated, you would be very wrong. He was a central figure in the Brill Building era that brought the world lots of the most sublime popular music of the 20th century.
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If you think Don Kirshner was just some guy who Paul Shaffer impersonated -- brilliantly, I might add -- on Saturday Night Live, you would be very wrong. Kirshner -- sometimes known as the Man With The Golden Ears -- was a central figure in the Brill Building era that brought the world lots of the most sublime popular music of the 20th century written by the legendary likes of Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, to name just a few. "They were the gods," Neil Diamond once told me of those Brill Building greats, and Don Kirshner was the man who signed the gods, or as Neil once called Kirshner, "The Mayor of the Brill Building. "

I really wish that I'd been around to walk those Brill Building halls back then. Thankfully, I was old enough to grow up watching "Don Kirsher's Rock Concert" where I was exposed to everyone from Abba to the Ramones. Thank you Don Kirshner for helping to bring us so much enduring music that will outlive us all. Here are some of the songs I will be playing in Don Kirshner's honor today. Please feel free to add you own.

"I'M A BELIEVER" - The Monkees
"YOU'VE LOST THAT LOVIN' FEELING" - The Righteous Brothers
"SPLISH SPLASH" - Bobby Darin
"UP ON THE ROOF" - The Drifters
"WE GOT TO GET OUT OF THIS PLACE" - The Animals
"WILL YOU LOVE ME TOMORROW " - The Shirelles
"CHAINS" - The Beatles
"UPTOWN" - The Crystals
"SUGAR, SUGAR" - The Archies
"CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON" - Kansas

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