Barry Manilow talks comeback after scary nights in ICU post cancer surgery

Melissa Ruggieri, USA TODAY Tue, June 2, 2026 at 4:29 PM UTC

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At his lowest point, Barry Manilow weighed 128 pounds.

“I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked like one of those pictures you see about the prisoners in Auschwitz,” Manilow tells USA TODAY.

The iconic singer, sometimes derided for the very music that landed him in the Songwriters Hall of Fame and sold more than 85 million records worldwide, shocked his dedicated Fanilows when he announced in December that he was postponing his long-running Las Vegas residency and other tour dates.

Doctors had found a Stage 1 cancerous spot on his left lung.

The surgery was successful, but after the procedure Manilow, who turns 83 June 17, developed pneumonia and spent seven days in the ICU and close to a month in the hospital.

“In the middle of January my lung collapsed, so I had to go back to the hospital,” he says. “So the healing actually started in February and they say it takes about a year before everything comes back, but I’ve got this tour coming up.”

Barry Manilow has been battling lung cancer since late 2025 and says he's "in great shape" now.

Manilow is resolute about getting back on stage. His postponed dates are scheduled to resume in early June in the UK before a return to his run of The Last Concerts arena shows in the US and his Vegas residency at Westgate.

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“I’ve been practicing singing in my studio and I’m pretty close,” he says, his voice noticeably deeper and raspier than in recent years. “I’m not sure I can do 90 minutes (on stage) … I’m pushing myself as much as I can every day. And now and again, I think I'm fine. And then the next day I can't talk, no less sing.”

On June 5, Manilow releases “What a Time,” his first album of original material in nearly 14 years, prefaced by another Top 10 on the Adult Contemporary chart, the wistful “Once Before I Go,” written in the ‘80s by renowned songwriter Peter Allen. The song is not, as might be connoted, about foreshadowing death, but the dissolution of a romance.

Still, Manilow is contemplative about life and shares that he had a few scary nights lying awake in his hospital bed.

“Nobody thinks about that they’re going to die. But a couple of nights I said to myself, ‘Whoa, have I done everything I wanted to do? Have I been good to people?' It’s that same story you think of when you get that close (to death). And I was right there, I was inside that,” he says. “I hope we all think like that if we’re at the edge of (death’s) door.”

Did he feel he succeeded in checking those boxes of life?

“Well, I did wonder, ‘What is my epitaph?’ And it would be, I hope I made people feel good. I always wanted to do that. I want people to feel better when they leave my shows than when they came in,” he says. “That’s my goal. Always has been.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Barry Manilow says a collapsed lung almost killed him

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