Barry Manilow has spent much of 2024 playing his last shows. Not last shows for good, but last shows in cities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, where Fanilows have been able to attend concerts as often as Manilow could break away from his long-running residency at Westgate Las Vegas. Following more than a dozen May-June final performances at London’s Palladium, Manilow brought his The Last Concerts Tour to U.S. cities from St. Louis to San Antonio.
He’s hardly done performing though. Now 81, Manilow has begun his long goodbye to the more exhaustive aspects of bringing his music to audiences who may not be able to visit Vegas for Barry Manilow: The Hits Come Home. Bonding with fans is one of his major motivations, and he would tour until he dropped if he didn’t have the foresight to proactively plan The Last Concerts so he and concertgoers could savor every Manilow moment to the max.
They’ll just have to meet in the future at Westgate Las Vegas, where Manilow has surpassed Elvis Presley’s record of most performances in the iconic International Theater. The Hits Come Home is booked through the end of 2025, which means at least another year of hands swaying in the air to “Can’t Smile Without You,” over-the-top renditions of “Copacabana” and two seasons of holiday shows.
This year’s A Very Barry Christmas dates take place on Dec. 5-7 and 12-14. “I’m so proud of our Christmas shows,” Manilow said in a preview to the 2023 NBC televised version or the production. “It gets more and more beautiful every year. It’s a feel good evening of music.”
Most would argue every Manilow show is a feel-good evening of music, but it’s only during the most wonderful time of the year that artist who got his start in music by writing jingles applies his artistry to “Jingle Bells” and “Deck the Halls.” More than half of last year’s shows remained his pop standards, with fortunate Fanilows at the first 2023 Very Barry Christmas receiving a special gift: a rare cover of Joni Mitchell’s Christmas-in-California song “River.”
That track is from Mitchell’s critically acclaimed 1971 album Blue, released during the year that Manilow began working as Bette Midler’s music director at The Continental Baths in Manhattan. It was a pivotal time for Manilow, who would go onto produce Midler’s debut album, The Divine Miss M, in 1972. Manilow released his first solo album a year later for Bell Records, which Columbia Records executive Clive Davis would reorganize into Arista Records.
Manilow’s Arista oeuvre makes up the bulk of his regular The Hits Come Home setlists. He’ll be coming back to the International Theater hot off the heels of his latest extended engagement at Radio City Music Hall to play gem after gem. “Daybreak,” “Looks Like We Made It,” “A Weekend in New England,” “I Made It Through the Rain” and “Mandy” all get their due in an atmosphere of uplifting emotion triggered by music memories. We’re far from hearing the last of Barry Manilow.
Westgate Las Vegas. westgateresorts.com
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