Will Jennings, the Oscar-winning US lyricist behind hit songs reminiscent of 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 explanation for loss of life.
Born Wilbur Jennings in 1944, he was raised in Tyler and initially went into academia, educating 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 Seems Like We Made It, and No 5 in 1979 with I’ll By no means Love This Method Once more for Dionne Warwick. Within the late 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 comfortable 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 Increased Love. That music was later lined by Whitney Houston, for whom Jennings wrote a serious hit: Didn’t We Nearly 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 instructed him that it was so private he ought to write every thing himself,” Jennings mentioned. “Lastly there was nothing else however to do as he requested, regardless of the sensitivity of the topic. This can be a music so private and so unhappy … it’s distinctive in my expertise of writing songs.” Tears in Heaven grew to become Clapton’s largest hit within the US, reaching No 2 within the charts, and received Jennings a Golden Globe.
Jennings had already acquired arrange in Hollywood, incomes an Academy Award nomination for the Crawford-sung Individuals 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.
However it 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 certainly one 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 previous 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 every thing from the viewpoint of an individual of an ideal age trying again so a few years.”
Jennings additionally continued his affiliation with nation music, writing songs reminiscent of Please Keep in mind Me, certainly one of Tim McGraw’s largest 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 file 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 ceaselessly.”
