Songfacts®:

• From the 1957 musical West Side Story, "Somewhere" takes place in a ballet sequence and is sung by an offstage female. The song was written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. In the movie it is sung by Tony and Maria (the Romeo and Juliet characters).
• Many artists recorded it, but Barbra Streisand had a top 40 hit with this song on her 1985 Broadway album. Reri Grist sang it in the original film, and in 1964, P. J. Proby's version went to #6 on the UK chart.
• The song has become a gay anthem not because of the orientation of the songwriters but because it shows hope for a better tomorrow. >>

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  Sara - Silver Spring, MD, for above 3
• The Supremes used to perform this song with Diana Ross doing a spoken interlude in the middle; their version can be heard on the album At The Copa. Berry Gordy of Motown Records said of Ross in a 1995 Goldmine interview: "When she does a song like 'Somewhere' in front of an audience she still cries. I mean, I've never seen her do 'Somewhere' without crying. In fact, we used to stop her from doing it every night in the week. The Bernstein song from West Side Story. She was so dramatic and then she did the second ending and it was too much on her emotionally. She's so emotional and she gives all to her audience and she is sincere about it and serious about it."
• In tribute to Leonard Bernstein, Ben Platt from the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen performed this song at the Grammy Awards in 2018.
• Rita Moreno sang this in Steven's Spielberg's 2021 remake of West Side Story. In the 1961 film, Moreno played Anita, the girlfriend of Sharks gang leader Bernardo, a role that earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the modern version, a new role was created for her. Valentina is the widow of Doc, the drugstore owner from the original story who acted as a mentor to the warring teenagers. Valentina is still mourning the loss of her husband as she sadly sings the tune alone in the store's window. Spielberg spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the song's significance to the reimagined plot.
  
  "We decided that 'Somewhere' needed to go from the first person to the third person," he explained. "'Somewhere' had to be about [Valentina] mourning the loss of her husband. It also had to be about the last desperate connection between Maria and Tony. It had to be about the aftermath of Anita losing Bernardo. It is about: There's a place for all four of those characters. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but she's singing for everyone, including herself."
  
  Moreno, however, wanted her performance to be fueled by anger, but the Bernstein estate vetoed her vehement interpretation. "I thought it should have a bit of anger under it. It's not just, 'There's a place for us,' but 'I know there's a place for us.' I've always felt she's saying, 'Somewhere, somehow, damn it, there is a place for us,'" she explained. "It wasn't so much anger as 'I'm determined that things are going to change,' and the exhaustion of that."
• After recording her 1984 pop album, Emotion, which features the Kim Carnes duet "Make No Mistake, He's Mine" and the Jim Steinman cover "Left In The Dark," Streisand felt unfulfilled by the endeavor and decided to return to her roots with an album of classic show tunes.
  
  "One reason I made The Broadway Album is that I felt I had to stop recording songs that any number of other people could sing as well if not better than I could," she told The New York Times in 1985. "It was time for me to do something I truly believed in. This is the music I love, it is where I came from, it is my roots."
  
  Columbia Records didn't agree. The label wanted Streisand to continue in the contemporary-pop realm to appeal to the masses, but the singer's contract gave her creative control so it was ultimately her call. And it turned out to be the right one. The album went to #1 in the US and earned her a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1987. It was also nominated for Album of the Year but lost to Paul Simon's Graceland.
• Streisand described her version as "'Somewhere' in outer space" due to David Foster's synth-heavy arrangement. Foster, who also produced the track, won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) for his work on the tune in 1987.
• Streisand re-recorded this as a duet with Josh Groban for her 2014 album, Partners.
• Streisand originally intended to record the album in front of a live audience, but she scrapped the idea when she realized it was too much of an undertaking. "With the energy that would take I could do another movie," she told the magazine Digital Audio & Compact Disc Review in 1986. (She was referencing Yentl, the 1983 movie she directed, co-produced, co-wrote, and starred in after trying to get it on the screen for more than a decade.)