DIANE WARREN: Real Songs for Real People

Do you know when you’ve written one like that?

I do. I know when I’ve written a great song. There’s a bunch of them that I’ve written. Now, you don’t know that they’ll be hits or whatever, but you know when it works. When I wrote “Because You Love Me” [the Grammy winner recorded by Celine Dion], it was like, “Man, this song is better than I am as a writer right now.” There’s that emotional connection. I just wrote a song for Whitney Houston that’s the same kind of thing-like, “Whoa.” You just know that if she sings that lyric and that melody it’s just going to be insane, know what I mean? When you’ve written something like that and you cast that song right, it can be unstoppable.

Do you have a favorite recorded version of one of your songs?

A favorite recording? I do but, boy…any of the hits I’ll say are my favorite just because. I think “Un-break My Heart” is a pretty spectacular recording. Everything about that-production and vocal and stuff-is great. “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” That’s great. Lenny Kravitz just did a song of mine…one of the best things I’ve ever heard. I can’t say the name of that song yet, but it’s going to be on his next record. It’s just exciting to hear when a song has found its right home like that. When I wrote the song that Lenny did, I couldn’t think of anybody else doing the song. I called him and he loved what he heard. It’s pretty stunning. I think it’s going to touch a lot of people.

Speaking of Lenny Kravitz and “Un-break My Heart,” the list of singers who have recorded your songs is pretty unbelievable.

It’s pretty varied, isn’t it? It’s kinda cool that one person has written all of those, I think. I don’t know who I’m writing a song for in advance, or what genre it will be. I very rarely write a song with a person or genre in mind. If you write for one person and they don’t do it, well, then it is like, “Now who’s gonna do it? It’s so much in that person’s style. If you write a great song, it’ll fit a lot of styles. Look at “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” That was Aerosmith, and then Mark Chestnutt had a No. 1 country song with it. What is it, then-country or rock? It’s just a great song. I’ve heard European dance versions of “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” and we just did an amazing version with a Spanish opera singer. That song was huge. It was the first time that Aerosmith had done an outside song that wasn’t a Beatles cover, so it was significant for me. Then for it to be the biggest hit of their career was pretty significant, too. They had a No. 1 record across the world, and it reinvented them in a lot of ways. It felt good. I remember hearing that record for the first time. It just doesn’t get any better than Steven Tyler, does it?

Movies have been very good to you.

Yeah, my first big hit was from a movie-“Rhythm of the Night”-was in The Last Dragon. You know, my dad said he’d support me if I went to college. I hated school. But I went to Pierce Junior College for a couple years, and then Cal State Northridge for a couple years, and I took tons of film classes. I’d sit in the back of the class and work on lyrics. Anything to not work at school, you know? I think in a weird way, by osmosis or something, writing for movies just became natural to me. I love to capture an emotion and bring it to life.