Song:Up Where We Belong
Album:The Anthology
Up Where We Belong topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in 1983. It is from the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. It is what I call an orphan because it is not on the standard discography of either Joe Cocker or Jennifer Warnes. Paramount Pictures exec Frank Mancuso wanted a soundtrack album with a hit single to promote the film. Director Taylor Hackford liked the idea but he didn't have the budget to produce an original song. He asked Paramount music head Joel Sill for help. Sill called his friend Gary George who had recently become a manager and he suggested one of his clients Jennifer Warnes. She scored a top ten hit in 1976 with Right Time of the Night. She saw Joe Cocker perform I'm So Glad I'm Standing Here with The Crusaders on the 1982 Grammy awards. It inspired her to want to sing with Cocker. And that is what she suggested to Hackford. At the time Cocker was under contract to Island Records. Island owner Chris Blackwell agreed to this as long as the soundtrack album was released on Island. The score for An Officer and a Gentleman was composed by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Sill called veteran songwriter Will Jennings (After the Love Has Gone) and he took the music from the film and wrote lyrics for it. They convinced Crusaders producer Stewart Levine to produce the record. Paramount's Michael Eisner and film producer Don Simpson hated the record and didn't think it would be a hit. And Blackwell hated it so much that Cocker left Island for Capitol. Up Where We Belong wasn't a hit at first. But the success of An Officer and a Gentleman created interest in the soundtrack album and the single topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. Radio stations got listener calls to play the song and it grew from there. The soundtrack is available on CD. The song did not appear on a Joe Cocker or Jennifer Warnes album. But you can get it on this Joe Cocker 2CD budget comp that covers his A&M years. You can also get it on the Jennifer Warnes comp The Platinum & Gold Collection. Of course Jennifer scored another big movie hit with Time of my Life with Bill Medley from the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. Those two songs were her only number one hits. Cocker was on Capitol for most of the 80s. He didn't have the success that he had earlier in his career on A&M. Capitol A&R VP Don Grierson said that Up Where We Belong may have hurt Cocker because it was a weepy ballad and he's a rocker. I dunno. You Are So Beautiful was a big hit. Up Where We Belong was also a big gospel hit for BeBe & CeCe Winans. Jim Baaker had them sing it daily on The PTL Club but that song made them stars. Here's Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes performing Up Where We Belong on German TV 1983. There was no music video for this song.
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