Songoftheday 8/18/12 - Who knows what tomorrow brings in a world few hearts survive...

Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes - "Up Where We Belong"

from the album An Officer And A Gentleman (Original Soundtrack) (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)

Weeks in the top-40: 15

Today's Song of the Day was the Oscar-winning song by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes from the movie An Officer And A Gentleman. Cocker, famous for his powerful gritty voice and flailing like he's having a seizure while he's singing, is from Sheffield England, did some journeyman work in different bands until he struck out solo and formed the "Grease Band" to back him in the mid-sixties. He released his first album, With A Little Help From My Friends, in 1969, and while the first single,  the falsetto Beatles-aping "Marjorie", was only a minor hit in the UK, the followup, a proper gritty showstopper of a cover of the Fab Four's "With A Little Help From My Friends", was justifiably huge, topping the chart in Britain, Switzerland, and Holland, as well as becoming his first single on the American pop chart, which led Cocker to perform his memorable set at the Woodstock Festival. For his followup album, Joe Cocker! recorded later that same year, Joe covered two more Beatles songs, and in return scored his first top-40 US hit with his version of "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window".

Cocker's third album in less than a two years, Mad Dogs And Englishmen,  was a live set of remakes, and his version of the Box Tops' "The Letter" became his first US top-10 hit in 1970. During the decade, he continues to release more music, charting a few top-40 hits, but it wasn't until 1975's I Can Stand A Little Rain album that he got his biggest solo hit to date with another cover, this time "You Are So Beautiful", written by Billy Preston (a Beatles associate, coincidence?) and Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. The song reached the US pop top-5, and the LP just missed the top-10 on the album chart (#11).

His reinvigorated success didn't last long, though, as drug and alcohol problems that contributed to his debt and shaky live performances threatened to sink his career again, until he was asked to sing in a duet for an upcoming Richard Gere movie.

Jennifer Warnes, from southern California,  originally was involved in the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, before teaming up with legendary songwriter Leonard Cohen as his vocal muse and mouthpiece in the 1970's. During that time, she also recorded solo, and while her 1969 version of the Broadway Hair classic "Easy To Be Hard" (as just "Jennifer") bubbled under the US pop chart, she persevered until 1976, where her fourth and self-titled album rewarded her with a top-10 pop hit (and #1 adult-contemporary single) with "Right Time Of The Night".

"Up Where We Belong" was penned by film scorewriter Jack Nitzsche, Canadian native folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, and songwriter Will Jennings (who would go on to write another movie classic, "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic) for the climax where Gere's naval cadet character comes to the factory where his love (Debra Winger) works and sweeps her off her feet. Originally Gere resisted the sappy pinnacle point for the film, but had a change of heart after seeing the music with the finished shot. The song struck a chord in the huge (and female) audience, and the song bounded to #1, where it stayed for three weeks.

The song also topped the pop chart in Canada and Australia, was top-10 in England and all over the rest of Europe, as well as the adult-contemporary (soft-rock) chart. The soundtrack also made the US top-40 albums chart, and also included top-20 hits from Pat Benatar ("Treat Me Right") and ZZ Top ("Tush"). And while the movie won Louis Gossett, Jr. an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, "Up Where We Belong" also took home the prize for Best Original Song, which it also scored at the Grammys and the Golden Globes. Both Cocker and Warnes would go on to sell more records, Warnes even more so with the help of a little "chick-flick" movie called Dirty Dancing.

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In 1983, reggae singer Eddie Lovette recorded an island-centric version of the song...

The following year, British theatre great Elaine Paige included a solo version in her Cinema collection of movie songs..

And at the same time, gospel siblings BeBe and CeCe Winans reinterpreted the song as "Lord Lift Us Up"...

Up tomorrow: A former office cleaner sees her passion cascading.