"Take My Breath Away" is featured in the movie Top Gun, helping its soundtrack sell over 9 million copies. It's the love theme from the movie, which stars Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. The song plays under a steamy scene between the two that was not originally in the film - test audiences asked for something more intimate, so Cruise and McGillis were called back to the bedroom. They are seen in silhouette because by then, McGillis had dyed her hair for another role.
The Italian producer Giorgio Moroder and the American lyricist Tom Whitlock wrote the song specifically for
Top Gun. Moroder had written "
Flashdance... What a Feeling" for the 1983 film, so he had a well-earned reputation for making custom songs for movies that became big hits on their own. Whitlock was his mechanic - he got the gig becase he was working on Moroder's Ferrari and nobody else was available.
Whitlock did such a good job with the lyric that Moroder used him on the heart-pumping "
Danger Zone," sung by Kenny Loggins for the film. They became a team, going on to write "
Meet Me Half Way" and "
Winner Takes It All" for the 1987 movie
Over The Top.
Recalling inspiration for the lyric, Tom Whitlock said: "The title was a phrase that had been running through my mind, in terms of asking for that kind of awe, something so striking that you can't breathe."
As for the verses, Whitlock says he worked backward from the title, describing the events that would lead one to become breathlessly enamored.
Berlin lead singer Terri Nunn is the only member of the band who had anything to do with this song. Giorgio Moroder asked her to try singing it after the other singers he tried didn't pass muster with the
Top Gun producers. They already had a working relationship because Moroder produced the 1984 Berlin song "
No More Words," so Nunn was comfortable putting her own spin on it. She was able to imbue the song with lots of emotion, which Moroder liked. He kept her vocal and "Take My Breath Away" became a Berlin song. With a big boost from
Top Gun, the song became a huge hit, climbing to #1 in September 1986, a few months after the film hit theaters.
The band, though, was fractured. Nunn loved how it attracted fans and opened doors to bigger venues; her bandmates felt totally disconnected from it, yet had to play it at every show. These divisions led to Berlin's breakup just a year later.
Terri Nunn poured a lot of emotion into her vocal that came from a real place. "I was in such a dark place romantically," she
told Spin. "I hadn't gotten laid in probably two years. I didn't know if I would ever find love again. My job was working well, but my personal life was in the toilet. It was just awful. I couldn't sing it happy because I wasn't happy. The sadness in my voice gave the song more of the depth that I think it needed. For me, the way a song works is to connect with it emotionally in an honest way."
"Take My Breath Away" won the 1986 Oscar for Best Original Song, beating out "
Glory Of Love" by Peter Cetera (from
The Karate Kid Part II). That's a songwriting award, so it went to Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock. It was Moroder's third Oscar, following his win for Best Original Score on
Midnight Express and for Best Original Song for "Flashdance... What a Feeling." But Whitlock was fixing cars just a year earlier, so it was quite a turn of events for him.
The band, meanwhile, was on an international tour, buoyed by the song's success. They decided to skip the ceremony, a decision Terri Nunn came to regret when they won. On the show, Melba Moore and Lou Rawls performed it in their stead.
Most synthesizer-based hits of this era were uptempo tunes, but "Take My Breath Away" was a rare synth ballad. It worked because the drone that plays throughout the song creates an unusual rhythm that makes the vocals stand out. It also helped that the song had a strong visual accompaniment thanks to its use in Top Gun.
Michael Jordan was enjoying his breakout season when "Take My Breath Away" was a hit in 1986. As Jordan's star rose (he won the MVP the next year), many highlight videos were cobbled together suing this song under slow motion video of his spectacular dunks.
Jessica Simpson revived the song with her 2004 cover, which went to #20. She loved the song ever since hearing it in Top Gun, and made sure it was playing the first time she kissed Nick Lachey, who became her husband (they divorced a few years later).
The primary instrument on this song was a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, which created that droning sound. The snare came from a Linndrum.
There are no musician credits for the song, but two key contributors were Arthur Barrow and Richie Zito, two studio boffins Giorgio Moroder used as his "band." Barrow generally handled synthesizers and bass, Zito did drum programming and guitars. Moroder was a very hands-on producer who would tell these guys exactly what to play.
According to Terri Nunn, the song's melody was "kind of stiff" originally, and she loosened it up. "I had nothing to lose, so I sang it the way I wanted to, and I elongated it a little bit: 'foooolish looover's gaaaame...'," she
explained in a documentary. "I wanted it to be more fluid."
Giorgio Moroder, though, insisted that she not embellish the title line in the chorus, so when she sings "away," she stops instead of doing a run. This was Moroder's hit-making instinct at work: He wanted listeners to be able to sing along to that hook line, and they wouldn't have been able to if Nunn put too much sauce on it.
"Take My Breath Away" first appeared on the Top Gun soundtrack and a few months later was included on Berlin's album Count Three & Pray. They weren't planning on using the song on their album, but when it was a hit, their record label insisted it be there. By this time, fans of the song had it either as a single or on the Top Gun soundtrack, so it didn't move the needle on sales and the only other song to chart from the set was "Like Flames" at #82. This put the nail in the coffin for the band, which split in 1987.
Berlin's founder and main songwriter was John Crawford, whose contribution to this song was a bit part in the video and appearing with Terri Nunn on the cover of the single. The band went through a few lead singers before landing on Nunn, who vacillated between acting and music before committing to the band for their 1982 album
Pleasure Victim, which includes two New Wave classics: "
Sex (I'm A...)" and "
The Metro." [Nunn appeared in several films in the late 1970s and auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in
Star Wars.]
"Take My Breath Away" was a huge hit but signaled that Crawford was losing control of the band. Indeed, Terri Nunn became Berlin when in the '90s she acquired the rights to the name and launched the band with a new lineup. In 2004 VH1 brought Crawford, Nunn and four other members of their classic lineup back together for a one-off performance on the first episode of the show
Bands Reunited, which got Crawford and Nunn talking again. Nunn kept going with her own lineup until 2016, when Crawford and another early member, David Diamond, became the new Berlin. They put out a new, orchestral version of the song in 2020 on their album
Strings Attached.
The song was assembled on a deadline with lots of computers and synths that weren't all that reliable. According to Giorgio Moroder, he had the bass for the song on a computer but lost it, so he had to redo it himself. "And I'm not a very good bass player," he told Redbull Music Academy. "That song has a lot of little things that were not well done. But it seemed to do OK."
The music video combines footage from Top Gun with shots of Terri Nunn singing the song in an aircraft boneyard. It's very foggy, and pilots appear and vanish as if they're ghosts. Nunn's Berlin bandmates are in it, but barely.
Despite their European-sounding band name, Berlin didn't have much of a following outside of America until "Take My Breath Away," which was a global hit. It went to #1 in the UK, Ireland and Belgium, and in the UK it was a hit again when it was re-released in 1990 after being used in a
Peugeot commercial. This time it went to #3.
The song shows up in movies and TV shows from time to time, often for comic effect. Movies to use it include:
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Despicable Me 3 (2017)
Sucker (2015)
The Dognapper (2012)
Borat (2006)
TV shows to use it include Them, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Parker Lewis Can't Lose.
