AVRO · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Wrote or co-wrote more than 500 songs over a seven-decade career, scoring his own string of hits — "Oh! Carol," "Calendar Girl," "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen," "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" — while also writing for other artists, including "Stupid Cupid" for Connie Francis and "Love Will Keep Us Together" for Captain & Tennille. After his popularity faded in the mid-1960s, he staged a comeback in the mid-1970s with the number-one singles "Laughter in the Rain" and "Bad Blood." He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.