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Copacabana (song)

"Copacabana (At the Copa)"
BarryManilowCopacabana7InchSingleCover.jpg
Single by Barry Manilow
from the album Even Now
B-side "Copacabana" (disco version)
Released June 1978
Recorded 1978
Genre Disco
Length 3:48 (radio edit)
5:40 (extended version)
Label Arista
Writer(s) Barry Manilow, Jack Feldman, Bruce Sussman
Producer(s) Barry Manilow, Ron Dante
Barry Manilow singles chronology
"Even Now"
(1978)
"Copacabana"
(1978)
"Ready to Take a Chance Again"
(1978)

"Copacabana", also known as "Copacabana (At the Copa)", is a song recorded by Barry Manilow. Written by Manilow, Jack Feldman, and Bruce Sussman, it was released in 1978 as the third and final single from Manilow's fifth studio album, Even Now (1978).

The song was inspired by a conversation between Manilow and Sussman at the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, when they discussed whether there had ever been a song called "Copacabana". After returning to the US, Manilow — who, in the 1960s, had been a regular visitor to the Copacabana nightclub in New York City — suggested that Sussman and Feldman write the lyrics to a story song for him. They did so, and Manilow supplied the music.

The song's lyrics refer to the Copacabana nightclub, "the hottest spot north of Havana". The story starts in the late 1940s, focused on Lola, a Copacabana showgirl, and her sweetheart Tony, a bartender at the club. One night, a mobster named Rico takes a fancy to Lola, but he overplays his hand while trying to seduce her and is attacked by Tony. The ensuing brawl results in a shooting; after it is initially unclear "who shot who," it soon becomes clear that Tony has died. Thirty years later, the club has been transformed into a discotheque, but a drunken Lola, crazed with sorrow at having lost Tony, still spends her nights at the Copacabana dressed in her glamorous showgirl attire.

The recording was used as incidental music in the 1978 film Foul Play, which starred Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, and has been featured in over a dozen other films since. It is one of two Manilow songs used in the movie, the other being its theme song, "Ready to Take a Chance Again".

In his autobiographical work, "Americana: The Kinks, the Riff, the Road: The Story", Ray Davies, former leader and singer of The Kinks, recounted a story of a meeting with Clive Davis, then-president of Arista Records, at the record executive's home on Long Island where Davies suggested to Davis that "Copacabana" should be released as a single.


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