Will Jennings, Lyricist For ‘Tears in Heaven,’ ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ Dies
by Best Classic Bands Staff
Will Jennings, the award-winning lyricist for such popular songs as “Tears in Heaven” (with Eric Clapton), “My Heart Will Go On” (the theme song for the feature film Titanic, with James Horner), and “Up Where We Belong” (with Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, for An Officer and a Gentlemen), among many others, has died. His death, at his home in Tyler, Tex., reportedly on September 6, 2024, at age 80, was announced by several artists on social media. In a Facebook post, Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band called his former collaborator, Jennings, “a maestro, brilliant mind and a gentle spirit.” The cause of Jennings’ death was not revealed but he had been in declining health for some time.
During his career, Jennings co-wrote many hits with Steve Winwood. Among his other significant writing successes were “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” a #1 single for Whitney Houston and “I’ll Never Love This Way Again,” a top 5 hit for Dionne Warwick in 1979.
From his biography from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in which he was inducted in 2006: The Grammy and Academy Award winning songwriter began his Hollywood career with 1976’s The Commitment, soon after teaming with composer Richard Kerr to write Barry Manilow’s 1977 hit “Looks Like We Made It.” Two years later, Manilow returned to the top 10 with the duo’s “Somewhere in the Night.”
After earning his first Academy Award nomination for the song “People Alone” from 1980’s The Competition, Jennings collaborated with Winwood on several songs on the singer’s 1981 album Arc of a Diver. They reunited the following year for Talking Back to the Night, which generated the hit “Valerie.” The pair would later co-write “Higher Love,” which became Winwood’s first #1 on the Hot 100.
In tandem with Nitzsche and Sainte-Marie, Jennings earned his first Oscar for “Up Where We Belong,” sung by Joe Cocker andJennifer Warnes for the blockbuster film, An Officer and A Gentleman.
After working with Jimmy Buffett on 1984’s Riddles in the Sand and its follow up Last Tango in Paris, Jennings reunited with Winwood for 1986’s enormously popular Back in the High Life, earning a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year for “Higher Love.” In 1991, Jennings paired with Eric Clapton for the cathartic “Tears in Heaven,” from the motion picture Rush.
His biggest song, however, remains 1997’s Titanic theme “My Heart Will Go On.” Written with composer James Horner and sung by Celine Dion, the song earned a boatload of Oscars, Grammys and Golden Globes on its way to becoming the most-played radio hit in history.
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1 Comment so far
Jump into a conversationSo Clapton didn’t write the lyrics to “Tears In Heaven?” I thought the big sympathetic uproar at the time was that he wrote it about his son who had died? Typical Clapton to cash in on some emotional aspect of a song that he didn’t even write the lyrics for.