I'm Glad I Did -- Cynthia Weil

It would be impossible to imagine the popular music of the second half of the 20th century without the songs of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann.  If you're the right age, you like so many of them that they're on the permanent playlist in your head.  Here are a few: "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'," "Kicks," "On Broadway," "We Gotta Get Out of this Place," "Uptown," and on and on and on.

Now Weil has turned her hand to writing a YA novel, and while I'm far from being a YA, I found that I was the target audience for it.  Why?  Because it's set in the summer of 1963, and it's about a young woman who goes to work in the Brill Building with the idea of becoming a songwriter.  If I'd had any sense at all, I'd have done the same thing.

JJ Green's parents don't want her to be a songwriter.  She's supposed become an attorney, like them, but when she secretly applies for and gets a job in the Brill Building as an assistant to a publisher, with the chance to write some songs, they agree to let her.  If she hasn't gotten a song recorded within three months, however, it's off to law school.

It happens that JJ's uncle, Bernie, has an office in the Brill Building.  He's a shady operator, and he's been pretty much kicked out of the family.  He knows the ins and outs of things, however, and he's able to give JJ some advice.  Also in the building is a mysterious green-eyed young man to whom JJ finds herself attracted.  And the cleaning lady, who happens to have been a very successful singer at one time.  And as if things weren't complicated enough, there's a murder.

Like many of the YA novels that I like, this one has a lot of disparate elements that all come together in a satisfactory resolution.  It also has the Brill Building and quite a bit about the music business in 1963.  In other words, it's just about irresistible.  It has a great beat, and you can dance to it.  I hope Weil will write more about that time and place because I'm hooked.