Song of the day for January 21, 2024
Today’s song is from the Top Gun Soundtrack. Take My Breath Away by Berlin.
Rob Brill, was born on this day in 1956, is the drummer from American new wave band Berlin, who scored the 1986 UK & US No.1 single ‘Take My Breath Away’
“Take My Breath Away” was the second single from the Top Gun soundtrack album, following Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”, and was released in 1986 as a split single alongside the song “Radar Radio”, performed by Moroder featuring Joe Pizzulo.
The song peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and topped the charts in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium. It later went on to win Best Original Song at the 59th Academy Awards.
“Take My Breath Away” is available on both the original Top Gun soundtrack album and the expanded edition. The song was also featured on Berlin’s fourth studio album, Count Three & Pray and, as the band’s biggest hit, on several of the band’s compilation albums: Best of Berlin 1979–1988, Master Series, Greatest Hits Remixed (which includes a “Mission UK Remix” version), Live: Sacred & Profane, and Metro Greatest Hits. “Take My Breath Away” was one of the few songs not written by Berlin’s John Crawford that they had performed on any album up to that point. Following the release of “Take My Breath Away”, the band split over different points of view regarding the track: while Nunn viewed it as an opportunity that allowed the band to perform worldwide, Crawford disliked it as it had not been written or composed by any of them. He later said: “None of us had ever heard it. None of us had anything to do with it. I didn’t play on it. Nobody played on it. No one wrote it”.
In 2017, ShortList’s Dave Fawbert listed the song as containing “one of the greatest key changes in music history.”