“There are songs that I’ve written that feel like strangers to me,” writes award-winning lyricist Carole Bayer Sager in THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG (October 18, 2016/$28.00 hardcover). “And then there are the songs that define me, that remind me why I wrote in the first place. My best songs made people feel connected, better, hopeful. Even a shared sadness can help to heal someone who’s feeling completely alone. And that someone was often me.”

For five decades, Sager has been among the most admired and successful songwriters at work, responsible for her lyrical contributions to some of the most popular songs in the English language, including “Nobody Does It Better,” “A Groovy Kind of Love,” “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” and the theme from the movie Arthur, “The Best That You Can Do” (about getting caught between the moon and New York City). She has collaborated with (and written for) a dizzying number of stars, including Peter Allen, Ray Charles, Celine Dion, Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Clint Eastwood, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Carole King, Melissa Manchester, Reba McEntire, Bette Midler, Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, Frank Sinatra, and Barbra Streisand.

Her relationship with composer Marvin Hamlisch was the basis of the long-running hit musical They’re Playing Our Song, for which she wrote the lyrics. And her work with composer Burt Bacharach, to whom she was married for ten years, produced pop standards such as “On My Own” and “That’s What Friends Are For” (inspired by her friendship with Elizabeth Taylor), which raised over two million dollars for AIDS research.

But while her professional life was filled with success and fascinating people, her personal life was far more difficult and dramatic. In THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG, Sager tells the surprisingly frank and darkly humorous story of a woman whose sometimes crippling fears and devastating relationships inspired many of the songs she would ultimately write. Witty, candid, and observant, Sager traces her life’s trajectory from a frightened and insecure woman trying to find her way to an accomplished artist confident in her own achievements. The book represents her journey from darkness to light, written in part to give others who are struggling hope.

“I look back now and see all the times that something outside of myself became the only thing that made me feel alive—when I was so hungry to do more, accomplish more, or when I thought the person I was with made me feel like more. Today there is nothing outside myself I covet,” she writes. “I’ve learned that external validation is like cotton candy. As you taste it, it bursts into nothing.”

THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG will fascinate anyone interested in the craft of songwriting and the joy of collaboration, but Carole Bayer Sager’s memoir is also a deeply personal account of how love and heartbreak made her the woman, and the writer, she is.