Barry Manilow is officially cancer-free months after revealing his diagnosis.
“You just don’t even think about [how fragile life is]. And suddenly, you have lung cancer. But I’m still here,” Manilow, 82, told People on Tuesday, March 24, while detailing his health battle and recovery.
He continued: “I’m still here. I’m not all here — there’s part of me that isn’t here — they took out a part of me, and now I’ve got to figure out, ‘What do I do?’”
Manilow originally announced in December 2025 that he was diagnosed with lung cancer and needed to undergo surgery to remove “a cancerous spot” on his left lung. He elaborated on Tuesday about how having an MRI for a separate issue with his hips led to his cancer being discovered.
Barry Manilow has been open about his long history with cigarettes. “I smoked for 30 years. I started when I was 9 years old,” the “Copacabana” singer told The Standard in 2012, revealing that he later quit before starting the habit again. Manilow eventually shifted to vaping. In December 2025, Manilow announced that he had […]
“If he hadn’t done that, man,” he said. “[That doctor] saved my life, because there’s no symptoms for what I had. I could go on, nothing hurt — but they found the dot in my lung. They called me and said, ‘Could be cancer.’ That’s a bad word. ‘Not me. F*** you. I can’t have cancer.’”
Manilow recalled the moment he was told he had stage I lung cancer.
“They don’t even know how long I had this thing sitting on me. It could have been years,” he continued. “If it had gone any further, then I would be up s***’s creek. It just so happened that it hadn’t spread, and boy, oh boy, I thought I might be dying.”
After his lobectomy — a procedure which removed part of his lung — Manilow spent seven days in the ICU. “I don’t remember it, thank goodness, because it was a nightmare,” Manilow shared of his hospital stay. “I’m one of the lucky ones. I don’t have to have chemo, radiation and all that stuff.”
Manilow was forced to postpone concert dates while on the mend, noting that the experience has “really rocked him.”
“But I’m getting stronger. … It has really, really made me take stock of my life. This made me stop and think about: Have I done what I wanted to do, and have I made people happy? Have I been a good friend?” he concluded. “All of those cornball things that I’ve read for all of my life, I started to think about that, too. It really did stop me in my tracks. And the answers are yes. And as a matter of fact, there are more yeses than I ever thought.”
