She might have written nine Billboard Hot 100 number ones and had 33 songs reach the Top 10, but songwriter Diane Warren’s trophy cabinet is still missing the one statue she still craves: an Oscar for Best Original Song.
Which isn’t to say that she’s never come close. She’s been nominated a record 17 times, one of which was back in 1998, when she got the nod for writing Aerosmith’s monster hit I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, the big song from that year's silly summer blockbuster, Armageddon.
On that occasion, she lost out – some might say unjustly – to When You Believe, from animated Dreamworks epic The Prince of Egypt. However, in a new interview with The Telegraph, Warren herself has suggested that some of the lyrics to her big Steven Tyler-sung ballad don’t really stand up to scrutiny.
Alluding to some of the ‘romantic’ acts that are mentioned – the first line of the song is ‘I could stay awake just to hear you breathing’ and Tyler later sings ‘Then I kiss your eyes’ – Warren says: “I don’t want anybody kissing my eyes. I don’t want anybody staying up all night to hear me breathe. What the fuck are you kissing my eyes for?”
Well, quite. On reflection, those definitely seem like red flags.
Joking aside, although she does have the honorary Oscar that she received in 2022, Warren is still determined to get her hands on the Best Song Academy Award that she believes she deserves.
“I think it’s because it’s an award that gets voted for by your peers, and for songwriters there’s just one award,” she says.
She’ll have another chance at this year’s ceremony, which takes place on 15 March. Her song Dear Me, from the appropriately titled Diane Warren: Relentless, is in the running this time.
And if she doesn’t win, there’s always next year… or the year after that.
