Diane Warren
You may not know Diane Warren’s name, but if you listened to pop music in the 1990s, you know her songs. She penned such hits as “Un-Break My Heart” for Toni Braxton, “Because You Loved Me” for Celine Dion, “I Don't Want to Miss a Thing” for Aerosmith and “How Do I Live” for both LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood.
“The thrill is in sitting down with a blank piece of paper and coming up with ideas and then seeing someone in the car next to you at a stoplight listening to your song on the radio,” she told The Times’ Robert Hilburn in 1998. “I'll honk at the stoplight and yell, 'I wrote that.' I've done that a bunch of times. Mostly people go, 'Yeah, sure,' but sometimes people actually believe me.”
Warren was fascinated by music as a small child but said she was never interested in being on stage. By her teens she was writing songs and visiting music publishers with her father, but with no success. Finally, in her mid-20s, she got a job with singer Laura Branigan’s producer, who asked her to write English lyrics for a French song; “Solitaire” became a Top 10 hit for Branigan in 1983.
But because she had written only the lyrics, Warren said she considered her real chart debut to be “Rhythm of the Night,” a 1985 hit for the group DeBarge.
Related stars
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Points of interest
Academy Awards
| Year | Category | Work | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Best Song | "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" from Mannequin | Nomination* |
| 1996 | Best Original Song | "Because You Loved Me" from Up Close and Personal | Nomination |
| 1997 | Best Original Song | "How Do I Live" from Con Air | Nomination |
| 1998 | Best Original Song | "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from Armageddon | Nomination |
| 1999 | Best Song | "Music of My Heart" from Music of the Heart | Nomination |
| 2001 | Best Original Song | "There You'll Be" from Pearl Harbor | Nomination |
| 2015 | Best Original Song | "Til It Happens To You" from "The Hunting Ground" | Nomination* |
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