Copacabana (At The Copa)

"Copacabana" is a 1978 disco song, sung by Barry Manilow and written by Jack Feldman, Barry Manilow, and Bruce Sussman. It is also known as "At the Copa" after the first few words of the refrain. It debuted on Billboard magazine's Top 40 chart on July 7, 1978, and peaked at #8. It peaked at #42 in the UK the same year. A remixed version of the song peaked at #22 in 1993. The record earned for Manilow his first (and only, to date) Grammy Award in February 1979 and his first gold single for a song he composed.

The song's title refers to the famous New York City night club, the Copacabana night club. As per the lyrics "… at the Copa, Copacabana, hottest spot north of Havana …", and tells the story of Lola, a showgirl, and her lover Tony, a bartender at the club.

The recording was used as incidental music in the 1978 movie Foul Play, which starred Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, and has been featured in over a dozen other films. The single version clocks in at 4:08, the Extended Disco version is titled "Copacabana (At the Copa) (Disco)" and is 5:46. As opposed to a commercial 12" single, the extended version was on the B-side of the 45 and can also be found on Manilow's first Greatest Hits double album.

Manilow released a Spanish version shortly after the English version. Available as a 12" disco single, "Copacabana (En el Copa)", didn't chart on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, but was used by dance club disc jockeys.

A home demo recording, albeit truncated, is available on the 4 CD/1 DVD box set collection, The Complete Collection and Then Some….

In 1985, Manilow and his collaborators Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman expanded the song into a full length, made-for-television musical, also called Copacabana, writing many additional songs and expanding the plot suggested by the song. This was the first original musical written for television since Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella in 1957. This film version was then further expanded by Manilow, Feldman, and Sussman into a full-length, two-act stage musical that ran at the Prince of Wales Theatre on London's West End for two years prior to a lengthy tour of the UK. An American production was later mounted that toured the US for over a year. Over 200 productions of the show have since been mounted worldwide.