Songfacts®:

• Written by Eddie Arkin and Lorraine Feather, this techno-swing song finds Barry Manilow in a dancing mood as he prepares to have big fun on the weekend. Arkin wrote the tune in 1985 when he was testing out his new synthesizer system.
  
  "Like a kid in a candy store, I couldn't wait to explore the many musical avenues that it offered," he recalled in the liner notes of Manilow's 1992 compilation, The Complete Collection And Then Some. "Wouldn't it be hip, I thought, to combine the sounds of the swing era with the new technology and write a 'techno-swing' song."
  
  With that idea in mind, he enlisted Feather, the leader of a jazz group called Full Swing, to help him write the song. A couple years later, Feather got wind that Manilow was putting together a contemporary swing album and thought "Big Fun" would be perfect for it.
• Arkin, who is also listed as a co-producer on the album, arranged the single "Brooklyn Blues," which was a Top 20 hit on the Adult Contemporary chart. The Swing Street collaboration marked the beginning of a long creative partnership between Arkin and Manilow, with Arkin signing on as the music director of a CBS TV special based on the album, titled Big Fun On Swing Street. The pair also teamed up to produce Manilow's 1990 Christmas album, Because It's Christmas, as well as Nancy Wilson's With My Lover Beside Me, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 1993.
• The album title was inspired by 52nd Street in Midtown, Manhattan, which was nicknamed "Swing Street" in the 1930s due to its proliferation of jazz clubs.
• Manilow's urge to explore different styles in the '80s also led to 2:00 AM Paradise Café, a project that brought together a group of jazz and blues legends to perform on torch songs written by Manilow. One of them was "When October Goes," which was based on a poem by famed Tin Pan Alley songwriter Johnny Mercer.