FEATURE:
Groovelines
Berlin – Take My Breath Away
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I love a good ‘80s power ballad…
and the one I am featuring in Groovelines is a classic! written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock for the 1986 film Top Gun, Take My Breath Away was performed (epically) by the New Wave band, Berlin. No mere one-hit wonder, the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1986. It is one of those tracks that everyone knows and has heard. Many might not be aware of the story behind the classic. There are a couple of articles that look at how the song was written and what it was like for Berlin recording it. One of the biggest number one tracks of the 1980s, I think that Take My Breath Away still sounds impactful and emotive. It may have dated a bit, though you can put the track on and feel lifted by it. Stereogum put great number ones under the microscope. They looked about – among other things – how Giorgio Moroder became involved, in addition to how the song differs from some of the more overwrought and forgettable film songs of the 1980s:
“By the time he made “Take My Breath Away,” Moroder had been working in movies for nearly a decade, and he’d effectively left behind the Euro-disco sound that he’d revolutionized with his old collaborator Donna Summer. Moroder had won two Oscars, and he’d co-written and produced #1 hits for two different Bruckheimer-produced films: Blondie’s “Call Me,” from American Gigolo, and Irene Cara’s “Flashdance… What A Feeling,” from Flashdance. Moroder had also produced the Scarface soundtrack, re-scored the silent sci-fi classic Metropolis, and worked with David Bowie on “Cat People (Putting Out The Fire).” He’d recorded an album with the Human League frontman Philip Oakey. He’d made “The NeverEnding Story,” the theme song from the film of the same title, with the Kajagoogoo leader Limahl, and I will love that song for as long as I draw breath on this planet. (“The NeverEnding Story” peaked at #17.) The man was doing well for himself.
The Los Angeles synthpop group Berlin, singer Terri Nunn in particular, were huge admirers of Moroder. Berlin had formed in 1978, when synthpop was still an extremely fringe concern in America. They loved European electronic groups like Kraftwerk; Nunn later told The Guardian, “The band name was our attempt to make people think we were German.” Nunn, a Los Angeles teenager, joined Berlin in 1979, after they’d already been through a couple of singers. (The #1 single in America on the week of Nunn’s birth was Gary U.S. Bonds’ “Quarter To Three.”) Nunn was a part-time actress who’d auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars when she was 15. Her audition, with Harrison Ford, is still online. It’s pretty funny! She would not have been a very good Princess Leia!
At least on paper, “Take My Breath Away” does all the things that a big-movie love ballad is supposed to do. Whitlock’s lyrics are absolute romantic gibberish: “Watching every motion in my foolish lover’s game/ On this endless ocean, finally lovers know no shame.” The music is slow and stately, and there’s a late-song key change to pound all the emotions home. But rather than string-soaked grandeur, “Take My Breath Away” keeps things chilly and synthetic. It floats there with an eerie sort of stillness — pretty, but airless.
It’s instructive to compare “Take My Breath Away” to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes’ “Up Where We Belong,” another love ballad from a blockbuster movie about a hotshot military recruit who falls in love at training camp. “Up Where We Belong” is pure early-’80s schlock, full of tinkly pianos and melodramatic strings. Cocker and Warnes sing it like they’re howling at the heavens. Moroder’s approach on “Take My Breath Away” couldn’t be more different. He pulls everything back, turning the song into a dreamily morose sigh. And in Terri Nunn, he found the right singer to deliver that sigh.
The Top Gun soundtrack, like the movie, was a huge hit, even though most of it is forgettable garbage from bands like Cheap Trick and the Miami Sound Machine. (After “Danger Zone” and “Take My Breath Away” faded from the charts, Loverboy made it to #12 with their own garbage-ass Top Gun ballad “Heaven In Your Eyes.”) The next year, Moroder and Whitlock won the Best Original Song Oscar for “Take My Breath Away,” beating out Peter Cetera’s “Glory Of Love” and the An American Tail banger “Somewhere Out There” in the process. (“Somewhere Out There,” as performed by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram, peaked at #2. Their version is an 8, though the version that Fievel sings in the movie would probably be a 10.) Moroder accepted his third Oscar from Bernadette Peters, and he seemed overcome. “This I really like,” he said. Later on, Moroder said that “Take My Breath Away” was his favorite song that he’d made — a crazy thing to hear from the man partially responsible for “I Feel Love”.
My favourite aspect of Take My Breath Away is the vocal performance from Terri Nunn. She brings so much electricity and passion to the words! In November last year, The Guardian interviewed her and Giorgio Moroder about the creation of Take My Breath Away:
“Terri Nunn, singer
Before I was in Berlin I auditioned for the part of Princes Leia in Star Wars. I was 15 but looked 12. Harrison Ford was over 30 but looked 19 or 20. We sat in deckchairs to say our lines. George Lucas, bless him, sent me a letter thanking me and saying: “We chose Carrie Fisher, but we’d like to help you.” He introduced me to Steven Spielberg and all these guys. I was offered the part of Lucy Ewing in Dallas, but the seven-year contract scared me because I really wanted to do music. My mother told me to go with my heart, but my agent was so annoyed with me for turning down Dallas that he dropped me. A year later, I met John Crawford [bass/vocals] and joined Berlin.
People laughed at us at first because power-pop or arena rock were popular and we were into electronic music – Kraftwerk and Ultravox. The band name was our attempt to make people think we were German.
We loved what Giorgio Moroder was doing and begged to work with him, but he was huge: he had worked with David Bowie, Donna Summer, Blondie and on Flashdance. We could eventually afford him for just one song, No More Words. While we were working with him, he got the contract for Top Gun and wrote Take My Breath Away. He’d tried other singers on it but the film’s producers had turned them all down, so Giorgio suggested us. We hadn’t had big hits, but he could be very convincing and told them: “Oh, they’ll be huge.”
We went into Giorgio’s vast studio complex in North Hollywood, where he was doing three or four projects simultaneously with an assistant producer in every room. He would blow in and say: “I don’t like the horns. Take them out. We’ll do more later. OK, bye.” Then he’d return later: “Oh I love it! Do more harmonies!”
He added horns and guitars and made everything more lush. He kept bringing me back to simplify the vocal, saying: “People need to want to sing along.” In acting, I’d learned a lot about channelling emotion. I was alone. I’d been so busy with the band I’d not had a relationship for four years. So I sang it from a feeling of sadness and longing, and maybe that’s what resonated. At first, nothing happened and our manager said: “Terri, if this goes Top 10, I’ll get a mohawk.” But the record company kept pushing and it went to No 1 around the world, so MTV came and filmed our manager getting a mohawk”.
Having turned thirty-five earlier in the year, Berlin’s sweeping and anthemic Take My Breath Away is a song that is the highlight from Top Gun’s soundtrack. With lyrics from Tom Whitlock and production/composition from Giorgio Moroder, it has been good exploring the history and story of one of the biggest songs from the 1980s. After all of these years, Take My Breath Away remains…
A singalong classic.