An
Officer and a Gentleman is another one of those '80s movies that
everybody supposedly remembers fondly but that I've never seen.
Occasional random viewings of the ending, where Richard Gene
romantically carries Debra Winger out of a factory in his arms, pretty
much zapped any curiosity I might have had. I just remember The Simpsons
making fun of it one time.
I'm not here to talk about
An Officer and a Gentleman, however. I'm here to talk about the song
that played over that inspiring/groan-inducing ending. "Up Where We Belong"
may have been the most unlikely pairing of beauty and the beast since
Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle (and perhaps wasn't outdone until the
pairing of Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue). In one corner, we have the
sweet, angelic, countrified soprano of Jennifer Warnes, who sounds like
she just came back from a Disney soundtrack. In the other corner, we
have the craggy, booze-soaked growl of Joe Cocker, a singer who
perennially sounds like he is splitting his own throat in half. On
paper, it should have been a disaster. But in the studio, it was hot, sweaty soft-rock magic.
By the time the chorus comes,
Warnes doesn't even know what to do in relation to the seizure victim
standing next to her, so she essentially just lays low and lets Joe fly
his freak flag. An actual eagle crying does not sound as sickly and
tortured as Joe does when he is singing that lyric.
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1 comment:
A few years ago on American Idol they dragged Joe Cocker up on stage, and it was certainly a "hey some homeless guy has gotten on stage, get him off of there" kind of moment. If you think he looked bad in the 80s, imagine him much older with missing teeth.
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