The paradox of Diane Warren, the eternal Oscar nominee for her romantic songs who has never fallen in love

"Mom, I've finally found a man!"

On November 19, the composer Diane Warren (Van Nuys, Los Angeles, 66 years old) got on the stage of the Fairmont Century Plaza hotel, looked at the sky and, with the statuette in her hand that her friend Cher had just given her, began like this his acceptance speech for the honorary Oscar awarded to him by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

"I know you wanted a nice Jewish boy, but he's hard to find," he finished off the joke.

It is public and notorious, because she has boasted of it on numerous occasions, that Warren has never been interested in finding a partner.

The composer of some of the best love songs of all time has never fallen in love.

"I don't want to sleep with someone breathing next to me, just with my cat [Rabbit] purring," he told journalist Scott Feinberg during his interview for his famous Oscars podcast,

, in 2019. But he did want to the award.

She had aspired to achieve it 13 times since 1987, which today is 14 thanks to her last nomination, for

, the song performed by Sofia Carson that she composed for the movie

.

All of them without success, which makes her the fifth most nominated person without being awarded in the history of the Oscars, beyond the honorary Oscar that a few months ago served as reparation for that injustice.

But at the same time, with great success.

Let's start from the beginning.

Diane Warren and Steven Tyler at a gala in Los Angeles in 2015.Michael Kovac

Diane Warren was born in Van Nuys, the most important district of the San Fernando Valley, in Los Angeles, into a middle-class family (her father was an insurance salesman; her mother, a housewife).

She was the youngest of three sisters and she discovered her musical vocation at the age of seven, while she learned that songs did not compose themselves.

Browsing through her sisters' records, she learned what song credits were.

The first whose credits she remembers is

, the Drifters song, composed by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

In adolescence she managed to get her father, the only one who gave some fuel to her interests, to give her a guitar and enroll her in classes.

She only went to one.

After the first one, the professor met with Mr. Warren and told him, "Your daughter of hers has no future in music."

That did not discourage the girl, who continued playing and learning to compose in an obsessive and self-taught way during a rebellious adolescence: she ran away from home several times and was arrested for marijuana use many more, the first time at the age of 14.

Her higher studies failed to daunt her either.

They did not encourage her vocation, but its facilities helped her: the piano rooms of the Public University of the State of California, in Northridge, became her home in the years in which she studied there, where she took the opportunity to deal with the instrument that was would become his main work tool.

Diane Warren unveils her star on the Los Angeles Walk of Fame in 2001.Ron Galella, Ltd. (Ron Galella Collection via Getty)

Upon finishing his studies and with a good handful of songs in his portfolio, he got his first job in the sector, within the team of authors who composed for music producer Jack White (not the White stripes, another with the same name).

Her first task was to write the lyrics for the Anglo-Saxon version of

(1983), a French song that became the first single from Laura Branigan's second album, who had already triumphed with her version

of Umberto Tozzi 's

That strengthened Warren's position within the team until his first big hit came,

(1985), a song he composed for DeBarge and which reached number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

With the foundation of her career established, Diane decided to rebel against the leonine conditions White subjected her team to.

"He paid me the minimum [about $250 a week], he kept my publishing rights, it was a terrible deal, but he had nothing at the time (...) Now we are friends, I am grateful to him, but then he was not so kind ”.

After the success of

, she asked him to be able to take a percentage of his rights and he refused.

So she decided to leave her and he denounced her, but the judicial strategy did not turn out as he thought: "I began to have offers from large music publishers thanks to her complaint," she recounted.

Publishers that offered to agree with her at 50%, the usual in the American music industry.

The defendant and the complainant only attended the first hearing of the trial and no more was needed: they agreed.

Christina Aguilera and Diane Warren at an awards gala in 2000. Steve Granitz (WireImage)

Since then, Diane Warren has been working on her own (and, therefore, at risk).

She rented a studio in 1985 that goes by the name of The Cave, still her current office, in which she continues to work with a routine that would make Aleksei Stakhanov look like a nini: six or seven days a week on average 12 hours a day.

And alone.

Even though there are more people in her studio, she likes to lock herself in the room where she has her piano and nobody bothers her.

"I already bother myself."

When she is told that there are pop songs written by 12 people, she is shocked: “And what do they do?

Bring the coffee?

(…) I don't need a writing camp [as the collective way of composing a song that contains all the necessary elements to be a success is known], I am my own writing camp, ”she complained to

.

He composes an average of one song a week and never takes vacations of more than six days.

First he composes the music, but he usually does it with a title in his head.

And how is it inspired?

Not in his experiences.

He doesn't need his own experience to become the alpha and omega of his songs.

“I am not someone who writes about his life because that would be very boring.

My songs are very open.

They can be understood in a million different directions.”

He often draws inspiration from friends' stories.

For example, she remembers the day a friend was telling her about her impending divorce and that she didn't dare break up with her husband.

Her friend burst into tears, and she let out an "Oh, great!"

"Does it really look great to you?" Her friend reproached her with disdain.

Well yes: she had just given him the inspiration for

(1988), a song that she ended up performing by the Chicago group.

A year earlier he had already achieved his first big cinematic milestone:

soundtrack

, co-written with Albert Hammond, had given him his first Oscar nomination.

And his first loss: she lost against

.

In 1987 nothing and nobody could compete with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

The group's song Starship was also their first number one.

He has had nine in total and has placed 32 songs in the top ten of the influential Billboard chart.

Among her milestones is also that of having been the first composer to have a song at number one and number two at the same time (

and

) and the first to get seven of his titles, from seven different artists, to be on the best-seller list at the same time.

His next big hit came from the person who gave him the honorary Oscar.

Or rather despite her.

In 1989 Cher was recording a Diane Warren song for

album when the songwriter asked her to listen to another one of hers that she thought would fit it,

.

Cher rejected it out of hand, but she didn't count on the stubbornness of her friend, who even offered to pay her money to record it.

“A song is like a dress”, the writer has once compared, which she boasts of her eye for assigning songs to unreceptive artists.

"You don't know how it looks on you until you try it on."

The rest is history of music and of Cher's resurrections.

The nineties were Diane Warren's great decade, the years in which she became the queen of what the Anglo-Saxons call the

, a musical genre so reviled by critics (Carl Wilson's book, Shitty

, about the album

explained it well) as appreciated by the public.

She composed

(1996), performed by Celine Dion and included on her album

, for the soundtrack of

her second Oscar nomination and a perfect example of how open the meaning of many of Warren's songs is, because although she is used as the epitome of the romantic, she wrote it inspired by her father, for the support he gave her in his professional vocation.

The Oscar went to Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber for

, from

.

"That night I drowned my sorrow in French fries," Warren revealed.

Her third nomination came for another chart-topping hit,

soundtrack

(

from

won ).

Diane Warren and Cher at the 'Burlesque' premiere in 2010.Kevin Winter (Getty Images)

Diane Warren with Lady Gaga (and Kirby Dick in the background) in Los Angeles in 2016.Todd Williamson

The fourth came for what is probably his greatest success and one that has a more peculiar story.

Like good shameless stars, when they were already engaged, Barbra Streisand (for whom Warren had co-written

) and James Brolin gave an interview to the recently deceased Barbara Walters in which they told her about the beginnings of their relationship and They recounted the following scene.

One night, tucked into her bed spooning her, he leaned into her ear and whispered, "I don't want to fall asleep."

"Why not?" she asked him.

"Because I will miss you."

Warren needed no more inspiration than that dialogue to compose

(1998), performed by Aerosmith, for

.

Won

, sung by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey for

(and in case you're wondering, yes, Warren has written for them too).

Later came

(for Music of the Heart, 1999),

(for

, 2001) and after them, a long stoppage of nominations until in 2015 he returned to the Oscars arena with

, for

.

Since then she has been nominated almost every year thanks to songs performed by artists like Lady Gaga, rapper Common or Laura Pausini.

Everything indicates that on March 13 Diane Warren will go home again without an Oscar to keep the honorific company.

It won't matter too much: the absence of awards doesn't detract from a career as prolific as it is successful.

In addition, as she has recently declared, she has a lot of good to teach, something that will sound hopeful to some and threatening to others.

"Some of my best songs haven't been heard yet."

Diane Warren and Ringo Starr at a party in 2022.Kevin Winter (Getty Images)