Neil Sedaka, the indefatigable manufacturer of earworms who convinced several generations that breaking up was, contrary to all evidence, hard to do, has finally managed the one separation no amount of falsetto could forestall. He died on February 27, 2026, in Los Angeles at the age of 86, after a brief but apparently decisive hospital visit. The body, sources suggest, gave out before the catalogue did.
Born in Brooklyn in 1939, Sedaka began as a Juilliard-trained prodigy who could probably have played Schubert respectably had he not discovered that teenagers with pocket money preferred tunes about calendars and sweet sixteens. Partnering with Howard Greenfield, he became the Brill Building's most reliable hit factory, churning out "Oh! Carol", "Calendar Girl", "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" and the deathless "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" — a song so relentlessly cheerful about romantic catastrophe that it made heartbreak sound like a minor inconvenience, like misplacing one's spectacles.
Sedaka sang them himself in a voice pitched somewhere between choirboy and helium balloon, selling millions while others (Connie Francis with "Stupid Cupid", Captain & Tennille with "Love Will Keep Us Together") reaped the benefits of his melodies without the burden of performing in jumpers. When the British Invasion rendered his brand of pop temporarily surplus to requirements, he retreated, only to bounce back in the 1970s with "Laughter in the Rain" and a slowed-down "Breaking Up" that proved the original hadn't been maudlin enough. "Bad Blood" followed, ensuring that even disco could accommodate his particular brand of melodic optimism.
He outlasted trends, outlived partners, and kept performing into his eighties, as if sheer persistence might persuade time to hum along in 4/4. In the end, though, mortality declined to take requests. Sedaka leaves a widow, children, grandchildren, and a back catalogue that will continue to ambush unsuspecting listeners in supermarkets and lifts for decades yet — a final, ironic proof that some tunes, unlike their creator, really are impossible to break up with.