Gerry Goffin: six of his best songs

The Shirelles - Will You Love Me Tomorrow (1961)

"Tonight you're mine … completely." This wasn't the very first song Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote together but, with its subtly shocking opening line, it was their first hit (a US No 1 and UK No 3) and set the tone for their signature songwriting style. King's mostly perky upbeat melodies would be countered by Goffin's lyrics of brief joy tempered by doubt; this friction caused a melancholy and yearning in their best work that set them apart from contemporary songwriting teams like Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. More than anyone else, Goffin and King soundtracked mid-century teenhood.

The Drifters - Up on the Roof (1962)

Pure escape. It feels so natural, so close to its subject matter, that it doesn't feel like it was written at all. Goffin and King wrote their songs cooped up in a cubicle at a huge publishing house at 1650 Broadway in New York, and this song was surely as autobiographical as the ones about their break-up (Just Once in My Life, Road to Nowhere). It is beautifully constructed. Listen to the line: "All my cares just drift right into space", and how the word "space" sounds precisely like breathing out slowly and looking up at a huge blue sky. Laura Nyro's sleepy cover version is also recommended.

The Cookies - I Never Dreamed (1964)

Goffin and King had already written two major hits for the Cookies – the masochistic Chains (covered by the Beatles), and their gum-chewing, catty Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby ("you better shut your mouth!"). But it was their fourth single, I Never Dreamed, that has come to be regarded by many as the quintessential girl-group single. Written by Goffin with Phil Spector protege Russ Titelman, it was direct ("He holds me when I'm crying to show me it's alright"), simplicity itself and sung tearfully by the Cookies' Margaret Ross.

Dusty Springfield - Goin' Back (1966)

"Thinking young and growing older is no sin." When Gerry Goffin first heard Bob Dylan, he was so affected that he binned all of his old tapes and acetates, considering everything he had ever written to be trite and worthless. Friends tried to talk him round, and slowly he began to work again. This philosophical song – performed with equal grace and beauty by Dusty Springfield in 1966 and the Byrds a year later – was about not taking life too seriously, something that Goffin must have been aware he was sometimes guilty of.

The Monkees - Sometime in the Morning (1967)

The self-sufficiency of the Beatles signalled the end of the Brill building era, but the short-lived heyday of the Monkees provided work for its redundant writers and arrangers. Goffin and King provided the Monkees with several classics: suburban melodrama Pleasant Valley Sunday, the trippy Porpoise Song, and this overlooked song from their second album about the joys of waking up on a summer morning next to the one you love.

Aretha Franklin - (You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman (1967)

Jerry Wexler came up with the two-word title – all Gerry Goffin had to do was write the rest of the lyric. A song about sexual and spiritual satisfaction written from the female perspective ("I just wanna be close to you, you make me feel so alive"), this was very much a grown-up version of Will You Love Me Tomorrow. Underpinning Goffin's lyric, Carole King's rolling, stately piano-led melody points towards the direction of her solo career; within a year of this single reaching the US Top 10, Goffin and King's partnership was over.