Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk (February 3, 1947 – January 23, 2024), professionally known as Melanie or Melanie Safka, was an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for the 1971–72 global hit “Brand New Key”, plus her 1970 version of “Ruby Tuesday”, which was originally written and recorded by the Rolling Stones, her composition “Look What They’ve Done to My Song Ma”, and her 1970 international breakthrough hit “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” (inspired by her experience of performing at the 1969 Woodstock music festival).
Melanie was born and raised in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York City. Her father, Frederick M. Safka (1924–2009), was of Ukrainian ancestry, and her mother, jazz singer Pauline “Polly” Altomare (1926–2003), was of Italian heritage. Melanie made her first public singing appearance at age four on the radio show Live Like A Millionaire, performing the song “Gimme a Little Kiss”. She moved with her family to Long Branch, New Jersey, and attended Long Branch High School. Bothered by being pegged by her classmates as a “beatnik” in school, she ran away to California and, after her return to New Jersey, transferred to Red Bank Regional High School in Red Bank, New Jersey; she graduated in 1964, though she was blocked from attending her commencement exercise due to an overdue library book.
In the 1960s, Melanie started performing at The Inkwell, a coffee house in the West End section of Long Branch. After high school, her parents insisted that she go to college, so she studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where she began singing in the folk clubs of Greenwich Village, such as The Bitter End, and signed her first recording contract.
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When first released, “Brand New Key” was banned by some radio stations because some heard sexual innuendo in the lyrics. Melanie acknowledged the possibility of reading an unintended sexual innuendo in the song, stating, “I wrote [Brand New Key] in about fifteen minutes one night. I thought it was cute; a kind of old thirties tune. I guess a key and a lock have always been Freudian symbols, and pretty obvious ones at that. There was no deep serious expression behind the song, but people read things into it. They made up incredible stories as to what the lyrics said and what the song meant. In some places, it was even banned from the radio … My idea about songs is that once you write them, you have very little say in their life afterward … People will take it any way they want to take it.”
In a 2013 interview with music journalist Ray Shasho, Melanie revealed the true origin of “Brand New Key”:
Of course I can see it symbolically with the key, but I just thought of roller skating. I was fasting with a twenty seven-day fast on water. I broke the fast and went back to my life living in New Jersey and we were going to a flea market around six in the morning. On the way back … and I had just broken the fast, from the flea market, we passed a McDonalds and the aroma hit me, and I had been a vegetarian before the fast. So we pulled into the McDonalds and I got the whole works … the burger, the shake and the fries … and no sooner after I finished that last bite of my burger … that song was in my head. The aroma brought back memories of roller skating and learning to ride a bike and the vision of my dad holding the back fender of the tire. And me saying to my dad … “You’re holding, you’re holding, you’re holding, right?” Then I’d look back and he wasn’t holding and I’d fall. So that whole thing came back to me and came out in this song. So it was not a deliberate or intentional sexual innuendo.
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She was awarded Billboard’s No. 1 Top Female Vocalist award for 1972. She was awarded two gold albums (and a gold single for “Brand New Key”), and three of her compositions were hits for The New Seekers. She is also well known for her musical adaptations of children’s songs, including “Alexander Beetle” and “Christopher Robin”. When she became an official UNICEF ambassador in 1972, she agreed to forego a world tour in favor of raising money for the organization.
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Personal life
Melanie married record producer Peter Schekeryk in 1968. They had three children: daughter Leilah was born on October 3, 1973; daughter Jeordie on March 27, 1975; and son Beau Jarred on September 11, 1980. Leilah and Jeordie, when aged 7 and 6, released a cover of “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” that charted in Canada, reaching No. 27. Peter died in 2010. Melanie was a vegetarian in the early 1970s; she also practiced fasting.
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Melanie resided near Nashville, Tennessee. She died on January 23, 2024, at the age of 76.
Read the rest of this bio here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_(singer)
[Melanie attended the Durango Songwriters Expo in California where we all got to meet her!]
Photo: Melanie | Photo by Alan Messer from Melanie’s Facebook page
Melanie, Singer-Songwriter of Brand New Key, Woodstock Performer, Dies at Age 76
