I had about 150 records then, filed alphabetically by last name of artist, but as the aggressively friendly upperclassmen were spiriting my possessions from the family Thunderbird into my college dorm room in 1985, the stack of records split down the middle. The Ms came up on top and the existence of my large collection of Barry Manilow records was suddenly revealed to all.
Day one — minute one — of my college career, and I was forever stamped uncool.
“You like Barry Manilow?” Stares. Incredulity. Loathing. Mockery.
No. I love Barry Manilow. As much as the crowds at the St. James Theater, where he opened this week and is holding court through March 2. But let me back up. I need to spread the blame around.
When I was a kid, my guide to all things cool was my uncle Scott Marsh (more like a brother I didn’t have to share a house with; he is only three years my senior).
Scott turned me on to baseball, “Saturday Night Live,” Steve Martin, Monty Python, comedy records in general and, at the tail end of my childhood, Bruce Springsteen. I remember hating my tape of “Born to Run” (copied from Scott’s album) the first 30 times I listened to it.
In the summer of 1977, on our backyard picnic table, Scott presented a new eight-track-tape we plunked into our portable square Panasonic: “Barry Manilow Live,” with its hilarious medley of then-infamous TV commercial jingles Barry had written.
My mother was a particular fan of “Live,” a collection of catchy uptempo numbers (“It’s a miracle! A true-blue spectacle! The miracle is you!”) and lovely ballads (“Weekend in New England”). Childhood sometimes seems like one endless summer car trip with Mom and me listening to “Barry Manilow Live.”
Manilow was far from the antithesis of cool then, by the way. “Live” hit number one. In 1978 a cool summer comedy, “Foul Play,” featured “Ready to Take a Chance Again” (which was nominated for an Oscar) over the opening credits.
But around 1979, standup comics started to mock Barry. After 1980, his singles never made the top 10 again. He was well over by the time of the infamous 1985 “Breakfast Club” dis (an indicator of that film’s general lack of ideas).
I realized that, as a straight white suburban American male, I was supposed to like the Clash and the Ramones and be angry, or at least alienated. But those bands sounded like noise to me. (I was wrong; in my 30s I realized the genius of the Clash, though I still hate most Ramones songs).
Who will deny that the melody of “Weekend in New England” or “Looks Like We Made It” is beautiful? The way the songs layered on the string sections and built to a colossal climax came to seem predictable and overdone, but they provided intensely rewarding emotional payoffs.
On the final go-round of the chorus, that shift into an extra Manilow gear always gets me, or maybe at least they got the 10-year-old me and I’m feeling nostalgic for being a kid. Doesn’t matter. Either way I love it.
My wife (unlike me, a trained singer) would later inform me that the transformation in the big finish is called “a key change,” and that key changes are cheesy. I think they’re awesome. Anyone can be restrained. Anyone can bunt. Barry swung for the fences.
And, no, I don’t love Barry ironically. I don’t pretend.
Paradoxically, this massively popular middle-of-the-road singer gave me the courage to be a contrarian. People tend to tailor their views to fit in not with overall society, but with their peer group or those they aspire to associate with (Woody Allen, observing this phenomenon, made the movie “Zelig” to satirize it.)
I resist. My opinions as a movie critic would be hopelessly dull if I kept trying to find some happy medium that’ll make me sound agreeable to the largest possible group. I see it as my job to be lively and amusing, not “right” about subjective things, which is impossible anyway. (I often tell people: I can’t give you your opinion. I can only give you mine.)
Sticking by my man Barry means I go through life thinking, “If everyone around me is saying A, what about Z?” I automatically consider the other side of an argument. It’s a reflex.
Barry inoculated me against the conventional-wisdom virus. There isn’t a single person whose respect I crave who will think better of me for loving Manilow. Which means I was actually the loner all those Ramones fans pretended to be, in their identical leather jackets and precisely ripped jeans. Loving Manilow makes you an outcast even among outcasts. Could anything be more gangsta?
kyle.smith@nypost.com