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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about music and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: “I Write the Songs” was written about Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys.

One of the great pop music ironies is that Barry Manilow’s classic hit song, “I Write the Songs,” was not actually written BY Manilow.

It was something that Manilow was worried about at the time, initially not wanting to record the song for that very reason, also stating that “It could be misinterpreted as a monumental ego trip.” But record it he did and it became a major success and perhaps his most famous song.

The song was written by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys (he had left the band for a time in the early 1970s, and that was when he wrote the song in 1975). So was the song really, then, written as a tribute to the genius of Brian Wilson, the famed songwriter for the Beach Boys?

Johnston, who wrote the song originally for Captain and Tennille, was once quoted as saying ” “I guess it’s pretty obvious that I wrote the song about Brian Wilson.”

That would seem to settle the issue, right?

However, a few things.

1. I have never seen a good source for that quote.
2. I HAVE seen a source on Johnston writing in to SongFacts to say the following:

I never wrote ‘I Write The Songs’ about Brian Wilson. I wrote it about ‘where music comes from’ (for me, music comes only from God). My song has nothing to do with Brian! I admire Brian Wilson’s great melodies and, as a member of the Beach Boys, I’m singing these fantastic songs in concert year after year.”

3. Really, just look at the lyrics:

I’ve been alive forever
And I wrote the very first song
I put the words and the melodies together
I am music and I write the songs
I write the songs that make the whole world sing
I write the songs of love and special things
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the songs

It sure doesn’t sound like it is written about a person now, does it?

I tend, then, to believe that it was not written about Wilson, so I’m going with the legend as…

STATUS: False

Thanks to Bruce Johnston and SongFacts.com for the information!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future urban legends columns! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com