Will Jennings, the Oscar-winning US lyricist behind hit songs equivalent to My Coronary heart Will Go On, Tears in Heaven and Up The place We Belong, has died aged 80. His agent mentioned Jennings died at residence in Tyler, Texas, and didn’t give a reason for loss of life.
Born Wilbur Jennings in 1944, he was raised in Tyler and initially went into academia, instructing on the College of Wisconsin. However in 1971 he headed to Nashville and have become a lyricist within the metropolis’s nation music scene, incomes his first nation No 1 in 1975 with Feelins’ by Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn.
He then relocated to Los Angeles and cast into pop music, reaching US No 1 in 1977 with Barry Manilow’s symphonic ballad Appears Like We Made It, and No 5 in 1979 with I’ll By no means Love This Means Once more for Dionne Warwick. Within the late Nineteen Seventies he additionally collaborated on two albums with BB King, and wrote the enduring disco hit Avenue Life, sung by Randy Crawford with the group the Crusaders.
A sustained collaboration with Steve Winwood produced the psychedelic tender rock opus Arc of a Diver in 1980, adopted by the hit single Valerie and Winwood’s most profitable album Again within the Excessive Life, together with hits such because the Grammy-nominated Larger Love. That music was later coated by Whitney Houston, for whom Jennings wrote a serious hit: Didn’t We Virtually Have It All, a US chart-topper in 1987.
Eric Clapton admired Jennings’ work with Winwood and requested him to collaborate on Tears in Heaven. Written for the movie Rush, the music was additionally a poignant tribute to Clapton’s son Conor who had fallen to his loss of life aged 4 from an open window in a New York condo.
“Eric had the primary verse of the music written … I advised him that it was so private he ought to write all the pieces himself,” Jennings mentioned. “Lastly there was nothing else however to do as he requested, regardless of the sensitivity of the topic. It is a music so private and so unhappy … it’s distinctive in my expertise of writing songs.” Tears in Heaven turned Clapton’s greatest hit within the US, reaching No 2 within the charts, and received Jennings a Golden Globe.
Jennings had already obtained arrange in Hollywood, incomes an Academy Award nomination for the Crawford-sung Folks Alone, the theme from 1980 drama The Competitors. In 1982 he wrote Up The place We Belong, carried out by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for An Officer and a Gentleman – the music topped the US charts, earned Oscar and Bafta awards, and have become a defining ballad of that decade.
But it surely was Titanic in 1997 that generated his most profitable and well-known music of all: My Coronary heart Will Go On, carried out by Céline Dion with music composed by James Horner. It topped the charts in over 25 nations, and received 4 Grammys, a Golden Globe and one in every of Titanic’s 11 Oscars.
Its story of everlasting love was impressed by a real-life assembly, Jennings later defined: “I had met this very vibrant lady who was about 101 years outdated once I met her … And she or he got here into my thoughts. And I realised she might have been on the Titanic. So I wrote all the pieces from the perspective of an individual of an excellent age trying again so a few years.”
Jennings additionally continued his affiliation with nation music, writing songs equivalent to Please Keep in mind Me, one in every of Tim McGraw’s greatest hits.
One other ballad he wrote for Crawford, One Day I’ll Fly Away, was a giant hit on its 1980 launch within the UK, reaching No 2, and was later carried out by Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!, with Up The place We Belong additionally making an look. Jennings additionally collaborated with Mariah Carey to document The place Are You Christmas? for 2000 movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas, carried out by Religion Hill on the soundtrack.
Amongst these paying tribute was acclaimed songwriter Diane Warren, who wrote: “The love to your good songs will go on eternally.”
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