Heaven In Your Eyes

Album: Top Gun soundtrack (1986)
Charted: 12
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Songfacts®:

  • Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" wasn't the only hit ballad from the chart-topping Top Gun soundtrack. The Canadian rock band Loverboy (of "Working For The Weekend" fame) contributed "Heaven In Your Eyes," a passionate love song about winning back a woman's love.

    The song was written for the movie, which features a romance between a hotshot naval aviator (Tom Cruise) and his new instructor (Kelly McGillis).
  • Loverboy vocalist Mike Reno recalled feeling a bit of pressure when the film's producers, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, tapped them for the soundtrack.

    "When Simpson and Bruckheimer call you for a song in their movie, you better deliver," he said in 2022. "We met them on a Monday, and they needed the song by Thursday, and we made it happen. It was 'Heaven In Your Eyes.'"

    Luckily, the band already had a song in the works with Vancouver-based songwriters Mae Moore and John Dexter, and they finished it with the film's plot in mind.
  • Reno told VintageRock Pod he was specifically asked to write a song for the jukebox scene, when Maverick and his buddies serenade McGillis' character, Charlie. Instead, it was relegated to the background of a brief scene where Maverick and Goose chat at the airport.

    Loverboy guitarist Paul Dean recalled in 2022: "It was the craziest thing. We all went to the movie expecting to hear the song 'Heaven In Your Eyes' in the movie itself and figured for sure it's going to be the one at the jukebox, but 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'' plays instead. Well maybe it's going to be in the one on the back of the motorcycle. Nope, not that one. Well then for sure it's going to be in the credits... wrong again. But you know we did a live video with Tom Cruise in it, and it went to something like #2 on MTV, so yeah, it's all good!"
  • Reno assumes he got the producers' attention by singing another hit movie ballad, "Almost Paradise," a duet with Ann Wilson of Heart that was featured in Footloose.
  • Loverboy keyboardist Doug Johnson refused to appear in the music video, which features clips from the movie, because he thought the film romanticized war and military service.
  • This was included on Loverboy's 1989 hits compilation, Big Ones.
  • After the sequel Top Gun: Maverick premiered in 2022, around the time Loverboy embarked on a summer-long tour of the US with REO Speedwagon and Styx, the song's streams more than tripled. But apparently the ballad's sentiment regarding romantic devotion was lost on Maverick - his Top Gun love interest was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he rekindled a romance with an old flame (Jennifer Connelly).

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