Musical talent is clearly present in the Sedak family.
On Tuesday, January 7, legendary hitmaker Neil Sedaka, 85, shared a video on TikTok of him singing a duet of his 1962 song “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” with his 19-year-old grandson Mike.
“Me and my grandson @Mike Sedaka doing a duet of ‘Breaking Up Is Hard to Do’” Sedaka captioned the post, which shows the two sitting together at a piano.
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The proud grandpa — and multiple Grammy Award nominee — previously posted another clip of himself and Mike on Dec. 30, showing the two singing a duet of his 1961 song “I Must Be Dreaming.”
“Hi, I’m Neil Sedaka,” the elder Sedaka says at the start of the video. “This is my grandson Michael Sedaka… He has a gene from his grandfather! It’s amazing. He plays and sings, he taught himself and has been singing all his life.”
Indeed, Mike seems to be following in his grandfather’s footsteps. Since October, he has been posting videos of himself playing piano covers of songs by Billy Joel, Ed Sheeran and others on his own TikTok.
“Michael has a great future, that’s what I predict,” Sedaka said at the end of his Dec. 30 post. “And I should know.”
As he noted in another post, Sedaka had hit songs in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. He is probably best known for “Oh! Carol, 1960’s “Calendar Girl” and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” all co-written with songwriter and longtime collaborator Howard Greenfield. Sedaki’s 1975 cover of “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” topped the US Adult Contemporary chart more than a decade after the original version was released, and earned Sedaki a 1976 Grammy nomination for Song of the Year.
Covers of his songs also became #1 hits in the ’70s, including The Carpenters’ recording of “Solitaire” and Captain & Tennille’s unmissable version of “Love Will Keep Us Together,” which also earned a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year.
Neil Sedaka.
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Sedaka was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983. Twenty years later, he was introduced to a new generation as a guest judge during the second season of the Fox series american idol. Runner-up Clay Aiken wowed the veteran songwriter with his rendition of “Solitaire,” and Aiken later released a recording of the song, which peaked at No. 4 on the chart Billboard Hot 100 in the US
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Source: HIS Education