Barry Manilow’s Farewell Tour Kicks Off at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh

by Dave Parsons

It felt almost tender stepping into PPG Paints Arena, the Steel City’s premier venue.  Many of those waiting in line to get in first saw tonight’s legend cloaked in lifelong devotion, across the street at the old Civic Arena….in the last century. This was no ordinary concert crowd, but a gathering of hearts that had held onto Barry Manilow’s songs for lifetimes.  Songs that had been wedding vows, funeral hymns, road trip anthems, and quiet reassurances on sleepless nights.

Barry Alan Pincus, born June 17, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York, has carved out a poetic legacy across six decades: a consummate songwriter, orchestrator, and orchestrator of intimacy. He catapulted into fame in the 1970s with Mandy, Copacabana (At the Copa), Can’t Smile Without You, Looks Like We Made It, and I Write the Songs, the latter oddly penned by Bruce Johnston but forever entwined with Manilow’s voice. His career spans 31 albums, 400+ songs, induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, a Tony, Grammys, Emmys, and even an Oscar nomination. Known for his talent for turning life’s simplest moments into emotional crescendos, tonight’s concert was billed as The Last Concerts Tour.  The evening was an emotional farewell to arenas he’s cherished, beginning in Pittsburgh.

However, it started not with music, but with murmurs. As people filed into the seating area of the PPG Paints Arena on May 23, 2025, I found myself surrounded by stories, not just seats.

There was Shane, a 60-year-old widower who brought his grown daughters.  He spoke of bringing his late wife to see Barry at various venues in Pittsburgh.  The songs had marked moments in their 33-year marriage.  He said he and his wife had promised to bring the girls to see Barry since they were teenagers.  Life got in the way, and it took decades longer.  I didn’t mention the empty chair next to them, but assumed the reason.

There was Brian, his name taped to his usher badge.  He had just finished a deep conversation with some ladies he had seated. He noticed me looking at him. They love Copacabana…they asked if they could dance when he plays it.  I asked him which Manilow song was his favorite, and his face tightened. He probably won’t sing it……it’s called All the Time.  That song got me through a few periods of suicide contemplation when I was younger.”

In front of me was Rachel, a retired piano teacher from Moon Township. She recalled the student in the mid-80s who asked for private lessons for a semester.  The student said he wanted to work on Chopin, which thrilled Rachel, until she found out the only Chopin the student wanted to learn was the part that was the intro to Could It Be Magic.  Rachel said that brought Manilow into her view.  She had spent many evenings quietly absorbing his complex arrangements and had gotten through some times in her life that she never would have thought pop music could accomplish.    

Holly, a hospice nurse in her mid-30s, still in her scrubs, came alone. I noticed her wiping a tear from her cheek even before the show started. She told me about her patient who passed last month.  Every time she changed her IV bag, the elderly lady asked her to put on Barry. Her favorite was This One’s for You.  She said it reminded her of her husband, who died in 2012.  She and her husband never got the chance to see him together in concert. She made me promise I would come tonight, so here I am.

And then, at exactly 7:38 PM, the lights dimmed.

The curtains open to the last name across the entire length of the stage, and the first notes of It’s a Miracle rang out like a trumpet call for joy. Barry Manilow emerged in a sapphire jacket, black dress shirt underneath, and his trademark grin intact. The glow sticks they handed out as you entered sprang to life, and this last go round of a party in the ‘Burgh was underway.

Barry glided into I’m Your Man, his voice smooth and strong with charisma showing through. His band was incredibly tight, and the backup singers/dance team members joined Barry for some Vegas-style group choreography.  Though not complex steps, they were all together, and Manilow at age 81 matched them step for step.

Settling at the piano, and looking like he was home there more than anywhere else in the world, he introduced Somewhere in the Night. It was one more run through these incredible markers in your life, that you know you may never hear live again.  There was soft singing, and there were people deep in thought. 

Manilow commanded the stage with the grace of a seasoned Broadway lead and the twinkle of a Vegas showman, mixing in the up-tempo hits with the heavy emotional ballads.  Daybreak led into Looks Like We Made It, and the roller coaster ride continued.

As the first few notes of Can’t Smile Without You, rang out, the crowd became Barry’s choir as he directed the proceedings, prompting each section to join in, while the words appeared on the screen behind him.  You know this one, Barry said with a grin as he worked the entire stage.

Don’t leave me hanging.  No one did.

Barry sang the first few lines of This One’s for You, and I stole a glance at Holly.  She had a handkerchief that I’m sure her patient gave her, knowing she would need it, and she was trying to catch the tears as they fell.  Manilow stopped after a few lines and told the story of how his grandfather, Joe, wanting to assess his natural musical talent, took him to Times Square, where there was a Record Your Own Voice booth.  For 25 cents, you got a recording to take home, and Barry played one of those recordings. On it, his grandfather encouraged him Sing it, Barry…Sing it.  Manilow credits his grandfather for encouraging the talent that he had and turning him on to all kinds of music.  He wrote This One’s For You in a tiny apartment in New York, with the thought of his grandfather cheering him on.

Later, when he played Carnegie Hall…..I walked out on the stage, scared to death. Grandpa stood up and gave me a standing ovation. And because he stood up, the whole audience stood up, and that was my first standing ovation….. By the time he went back into the song and brought it to its finish, Holly had given in, her face buried in her hands. You don’t listen to this music, you feel it.

You have to wonder what would have happened if Grandpa Joe hadn’t seen something in a young kid and encouraged him.  

After that roller coaster ride, the speed and tempo took the crowd back to the days of live TV and rock and roll, with Bandstand Boogie, the theme song Manilow composed for the American Bandstand show.    

Even Now was next and was a masterclass in dynamics. Barry’s voice dropped into its lower register, painting heartbreak with every syllable. He then honored Len Lavelle, the band director at North Hills High School in Pittsburgh. This recognition was part of the Manilow Music Project Teacher Award. Lavelle’s award included $10,000 from the Manilow Music Project for the North Hills music department, and an additional $5,000 from PPG Paints Arena, making the total contribution $15,000.

Manilow’s commitment to supporting music education and appreciating the efforts of dedicated music teachers is legendary.  Manilow talked about feeling like a misfit until he discovered music in school.  He said he wrote a song for the misfits in the world, and that he receives so much mail on the song.

When he started the first line of All the Time, I looked at Brian.  His hand was over his mouth, half in surprise, and half in living everything over again in 3 minutes. Glancing down the section, away from Brian, I caught a glimpse of Shane.  He was singing every word with all of his being, with the verge of tears in his eyes, and his daughters surveying his reaction. 

At this point, the rollercoaster went over another peak, as a Motown heavy medley got the crowd back up again.  Manilow had hits with some 1960s classic reboots, and the medley ended on Let’s Hang On, which Barry gave new life in the early ’80s.  The roller coaster ran full speed during the medley and went screeching uphill again with the opening notes of Weekend in New England.  The crowd went wild, and Shane sat upright in his seat.

Manilow’s voice is still as powerful as ever, and the performance of these songs in their entirety is what you hope legends get to do forever. The impact is what you remember from seeing them over the decades, those places in your mind that hold special memories, and this was reliving it all over again.  By the time Barry hit the high note….When can I touch you?….  Shane finally let the tears go, as his daughters leaned into him.

The group of women who wanted to merengue and do the cha-cha were now frantically searching their pockets for tissues. Rachel, the piano teacher, was pretending she was playing piano with Barry, with passion in her fingers and her expression, with each note. 

Rachel had barely stopped her clapping for the song when Barry began the Chopin intro to Could It Be Magic. Rachel’s hands moved like a conductor’s, tracing the air as Barry transitioned from classical to pop with seamless grace.  When the song went into the overdrive disco version, Rachel and the rest of the arena went right along for the ride.  The alternative version set up the survivor’s anthem called I Made It Through the Rain. Anyone still trying to hold in the therapy session they were internally having at this point let the dam burst, and stepped one point closer to the healing they needed.

Barry left the stage, changing jackets to a white one, and the video screen showed Manilow performing his first hit, Mandy, on a TV show from 1974.  As the video reached the second verse, Manilow took a seat behind the piano and picked up the song live, as the video faded.  Halfway through, he merged it with his original version of the Could It Be Magic chorus.  It was a musical reprise that felt like a memory calling back for one last dance.

Then, with the quiet dignity of a final chapter turning, Barry shifted into what felt like the spiritual center of the entire night. With the opening strains of I Write the Songs. The crowd erupted as if they all knew instinctively that this was the hymn they’d waited for. Not the song, but the message.

Soft at first, like a voice returning home, the verses swelled into something far more than melody. It was an invocation. His voice carried the weight of every decade, every heartbreak, every celebration his songs had ever touched. As he sang, I write the songs of love and special things…you could almost feel the timeline of his career moving through the arena like a slow, golden breeze. The song became a vessel, carrying Mandy, Even Now, Looks Like We Made It, Weekend in New England, and a hundred more through the minds of every person there.

Because they knew what this meant. This was the farewell tour. The last time many of them would ever see Barry at a piano in a packed arena, giving voice to the soundtrack of our lives. And he knew it, too. His delivery carried the weight of goodbye wrapped in gratitude. By the time he reached…..I am music, and I write the songs…. the glow sticks, the voices, and the memories all meshed into one moment of peace in the world that needed this encouragement to remember.

As Barry stood and gave a quiet bow, the lights dimmed like the final breath of a dream.

The stage stayed dark just long enough to stir the ache of finality. But then, most knew he had one more left. The band roared back to life, and the unmistakable Latin pulse of Copacabana (At the Copa) filled the hearts of those in attendance.  He and his backup singers broke into choreographed steps, merengue hips swaying, and all that sent laughter and cheers rippling through the crowd. It wasn’t about precision. It was about joy.

Those ladies in the section who had asked permission for this moment started a conga line up the steps in the section, grabbed Brian on the way past, and the ladies haven’t been seen since.  And just when we thought he’d given us everything, Barry launched into a reprise of the song he started with: It’s a Miracle. After thanking the crowd for the 10^th time that night, the final note hit, and with perfect timing, confetti cannons erupted, sending waves of paper streamers into the air. People caught them and held them like relics.

No one rushed to leave. It felt like stepping out of church after midnight mass, or like walking out of a movie where the ending rewired your heartbeat. 

The truth is, some songs don’t end when the lights go up.  Barry Manilow didn’t just write the soundtrack to our memories and experiences, but he had kept us company in the hard parts of life, reminded us we weren’t alone, and taught us how to Google, how to merengue and cha-cha. Like his Grandpa Joe, he encouraged us with notes and rhyme to be who we were supposed to be.

The songs, and Barry, will live on in wedding albums and hospice rooms, in the trembling voice of a widower telling his daughters: She would’ve loved this. They’re passed down like heirlooms, for teachers to show their students, and as old friends when you are at the end of the rope.

The recordings live forever in the voice of an 81-year-old man in a sequined jacket, offering up every note as both benediction and goodbye.  Because this wasn’t just another concert. This was the farewell. The last time many of us will see Barry walk out under the lights.

He sang for the brokenhearted and the bold.
For the quiet ones, and the women dancing in conga lines.
For the ones we lost, and the ones we’re still trying to become.

Barry Manilow didn’t just write the soundtrack of our lives.
He sings the songs that make the whole world sing.

And on his final night in Pittsburgh,
we sang them right back—with everything we had.

Setlist – Barry Manilow, May 23, 2025, PPG Paints Arena, Pittsburgh, PA

1. It’s a Miracle
2. I’m Your Man
3. Somewhere in the Night
4. Daybreak
5. Looks Like We Made It
6. Can’t Smile Without You
7. This One’s for You
8. Bandstand Boogie
9. Even Now
10. All the Time
11. Dancing in the Aisles / Dancing in the Street / Let’s Hang On (Medley)
12. A Weekend in New England
13. Could It Be Magic
14. I Made It Through the Rain
15. Mandy / Could It Be Magic (Reprise)
16. I Write the Songs
17. Copacabana (At the Copa)
18. It’s a Miracle (Reprise)