Take My Breath Away by Berlin - Song #85

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If this dreamy love song by new wave/electropop band Berlin sounds morose to you, that’s because lead singer Terri Nunn was feeling gloomy when she recorded it: “I had no love life at the time. There were no prospects for a relationship. I was alone, sad, and I was going through some personal crises... I was looking for meaning in my life, and I felt like a failure because I had no personal relationship. That’s where I was coming from when I recorded the song. I was singing about the yearning of finding someone who would take my breath away,” she told Deseret News in 2004.

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Take My Breath Away peaked at #1 on the U.S. Billboard Top 40 in 1986, and also hit #1 in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. It was a hit in Australia, Sweden, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, France, Finland, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, and West Germany. In 2016, Terri Nunn told news.com.au, “People just have history with that song. It puts people into a zone. I get to watch them go into that zone. If I get to meet them after the show, they want to tell me their story how Take My Breath Away was the soundtrack of something that mattered to them——their first kiss, the first record they bought, their first baby——it’s in their DNA. I know what that’s like. I have songs that changed my life too. They came at a time when I needed them, and I played them over and over. I get it. It’s really cool to have a song like that. It’s an emotional experience.”

Take My Breath Away is the love theme from the highest-grossing film of 1986, Top Gun, which stars American actor Tom Cruise as a naval aviator who trains at the U.S. Navy’s Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California. If the movie seems like military recruitment propaganda to you, that’s because it is. The producers made Top Gun with the cooperation of the U.S. Navy. The Navy got full script approval in exchange for permission to feature the Navy’s aircraft, ships, and bases in the movie. The propaganda was very effective, as evidenced by the major increase in military enlistment following the film’s release.

In the film, Take My Breath Away plays during a steamy love scene between Tom Cruise and American actress Kelly McGillis. This scene was not in the original cut of the film, but because test audiences wanted some sex, re-shoots were done, and the scene was added. In fact, the reason the actors are shown in silhouette in the sex scene is because by then, Kelly McGillis had dyed her hair for another role. (Watch the scene from the film here.) Top Gun has sustained in popularity, and is still one of Tom Cruise’s most popular and highest-grossing films. In 2013, it was re-released in IMAX 3D. In 2015, the U.S. Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry, which features films that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

The Top Gun soundtrack, which is one of the best-selling movie soundtracks of all time, also features Danger Zone by American musician Kenny Loggins, which is song #182 on this list of THE TOP 500 POP SONGS OF THE 1980S. Two more Kenny Loggins songs (both also from movies) are on this list: I’m Alright from Caddyshack, at #434, and Footloose at #72. American rock band Toto (which has six songs on this list) was originally meant to record Danger Zone, but there was a dispute between Toto’s lawyers and the film’s producers. Canadian musician Bryan Adams (who has four songs on this list) was considered a potential candidate to perform a song for the soundtrack, but he declined because he felt that the film glorified war. The soundtrack includes Top Gun Anthem by German musician Harold Faltermeyer and American guitarist Steve Stevens, which won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance in 1987. The soundtrack also includes Canadian rock band Loverboy’s Heaven In Your Eyes, which peaked at #12 on the U.S. Billboard Top 40, but did not make this list; the only Loverboy song to make this list is Working For the Weekend at #274. The original Top Gun soundtrack also includes songs by American rock band Cheap Trick, American R&B musician Teena Marie, and American pop band Miami Sound Machine, all of whom have one song on this list: The Flame at #272, Lovergirl at #384, and Conga at #462, respectively.

Italian composer Giorgio Moroder wrote the music for Danger Zone, and then teamed up with Tom Whitlock to add lyrics, and to compose Take My Breath Away. In 2020, Giorgio Moroder told The Guardian, “My Ferrari was parked behind the studio, with brake trouble. One day a guy, Tom Whitlock, came by and said he was a mechanic and could fix it. Later he said: ‘Oh, and, by the way, I’m also a lyricist. If you ever need some words...’ I was never good at lyrics, so gave him my demos. He wrote words for Danger Zone and Take My Breath Away among others, and the imagery was perfect.” Giorgio Moroder is known as “the father of disco” for his synthesizer work in early electronic dance music, most notably with American singer Donna Summer in the ‘70s. He produced some of her most popular songs during the disco era, including 1975’s Love to Love You Baby, 1977’s I Feel Love, 1978’s Last Dance, 1978’s MacArthur Park, 1979’s Hot Stuff, and 1979’s On the Radio. On the Radio was released in 1979, but peaked at #5 on the U.S. Billboard Top 40 in 1980; it did not make this list of the TOP 500 POP SONGS OF THE 1980S, but it came close, at #541. (Donna Summer’s only song on this list is She Works Hard For the Money at #231.)

Giorgio Moroder produced the soundtrack for 1980’s American Gigolo, which features American rock band Blondie’s Call Me, song #53 on this list. He also composed film soundtracks for 1978’s Midnight Express (for which he won an Oscar for Best Original Score), 1983’s Scarface, 1984’s The NeverEnding Story, and the 1984 restoration of the 1927 film Metropolis. Giorgio Moroder stated that the work he is most proud is Take My Breath Away, for which he won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1987. He won the same award in 1984 for Flashdance...What a Feeling by American singer Irene Cara, song #26 on this list. In 2020, he told The Guardian, “Take My Breath Away is my favorite work, because of the components and the way Terri sings it. It won best original song at the Golden Globes and my third Oscar. There’s some things you forget but this one felt incredible.” Terri Nunn refused to perform Take My Breath Away at the Academy Awards as part of a medley of the Oscar-nominated songs in 1987. She said that she would perform the song only if she could sing it in its entirety. The song won the Oscar, but wasn’t performed at the show. She says that she still regrets that decision.

In 2020, Terri Nunn told The Guardian, “We loved what Giorgio Moroder was doing and begged to work with him, but he was huge. He had worked with David Bowie, Donna Summer, Blondie, and on Flashdance. We could eventually afford him for just one song, No More Words. While we were working with him, he got the contract for Top Gun and wrote Take My Breath Away. He’d tried other singers on it but the film’s producers had turned them all down, so Giorgio suggested us. We hadn’t had big hits, but he could be very convincing and told them: ‘Oh, they’ll be huge.’” No More Words was Berlin’s first U.S. Billboard Top 40 hit, peaking at #23 in 1984.

Berlin is a new wave band that formed in 1978. Despite its name, Berlin is an American band with no connection to the capital of Germany. The name was chosen to make them seem “exotically European.” The band’s best-known lineup is singer Terri Nunn, bass guitarist and vocalist John Crawford, keyboardist David Diamond, guitarist Ric Olsen, keyboardist Matt Reid, and drummer Rod Learned. Originally called The Toys when formed in 1976, the band made some changes and added Terri Nunn in 1979, but she left the band later that year to pursue an acting career.

Terri Nunn appeared in several television shows in the ‘70s and ‘80s, including T.J. Hooker, Lou Grant, Vega$, and James at 15. She is in several movies as well, including the 1978 widely-panned disco comedy Thank God It’s Friday (which also features Donna Summer and her song Last Dance, produced by Giorgio Moroder). In 2020, Terri Nunn told The Guardian, “Before I was in Berlin, I auditioned for the part of Princes Leia in Star Wars. I was 15 but looked 12. Harrison Ford was over 30 but looked 19 or 20 [watch her audition here]. We sat in deckchairs to say our lines. George Lucas, bless him, sent me a letter thanking me and saying: ‘We chose Carrie Fisher, but we’d like to help you.’ He introduced me to Steven Spielberg and all these guys. I was offered the part of Lucy Ewing [on American TV show] Dallas, but the seven-year contract scared me because I really wanted to do music. My mother told me to go with my heart, but my agent was so annoyed with me for turning down Dallas that he dropped me. A year later, I met John Crawford, and joined Berlin.” She said that she was happy that she didn’t get these roles because then her life would not have been about music.

After Terri Nunn re-joined Berlin in 1980, Berlin had a minor hit with The Metro, from the album Pleasure Victim. The next single released from the album was the controversial Sex (I’m a...), which was a hit in the U.S. on the Billboard Dance Club and Mainstream Rock charts. Sex (I’m a...) was banned by some radio stations due to its sexually-charged lyrics, which of course, made it a cult hit.

In 1984, Berlin finally had a U.S. Billboard Top 40 hit with the first song Giorgio Moroder produced for the band, No More Words, from the album Love Life. Almost a year after peaking at #23 on the U.S. Billboard Top 40, No More Words was featured in the 1985 film Vision Quest, and was the B-side of Madonna’s huge hit single Crazy For You (song #122 on this list). The video for No More Words, which received a lot of airplay on MTV, is quite elaborate for 1984——a car chase and shoot-out in the vein of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, with some interesting twists. No More Words was also a hit on the U.S. Billboard Dance Club and Mainstream Rock charts. Other noteworthy Berlin songs include 1983’s Masquerade, 1984’s Now It’s My Turn, 1987’s You Don’t Know, and 1987’s Like Flames, which were minor hits in the U.S. and other countries.

“By 1986 we’d already been together as a band 13 years and were on our third album,” Terri Nunn told The Sunday Express in 2006. “We were approached by the producer Giorgio Moroder... He said, ‘I’ve got this great ballad, it’s going to be the sound of the summer, it’s going to be huge, you have to do it.’ I was happy to go ahead, but John Crawford [Berlin’s founder, primary songwriter, and bass guitarist] hated it. He kept saying it just wasn’t our sound or the right direction for us as a band, and that if we didn’t write it, we shouldn’t record it. But our label [Columbia Records] insisted it wouldn’t hurt us, so we went ahead. The song didn’t go straight to #1. In fact, it couldn’t get any radio play at all, but for some reason, someone at Columbia just wouldn’t give up on it. They pushed it for a month and then it exploded.”

Terri Nunn viewed Take My Breath Away as an opportunity for more recognition for the band, but other bandmembers didn’t like it because it wasn’t written or composed by any of them. Berlin was already having problems, and Terri Nunn lamented, “Take My Breath Away came along and that was another reason to fight. John [Crawford] was like, ‘That’s not our song. We have our own songs.’ I said, ‘Who cares? It’s Giorgio Moroder, if he farts, I’ll sing it. I love that guy.’ We fought about that. Then we fought about the fact [that] we had to play it in concerts. John didn’t like that either. We were just fighting to fight.” Berlin disbanded in 1987. “We were just tired,” she said. “We were mad at each other because we’d seen each other for 24 hours a day for the previous six years. Looking back, all we needed was a break, but we were kids, and the record label just wants you to work so they can get their money as long as the gravy train lasts.”

Terri Nunn began a solo career in 1991, releasing the album Moment Of Truth. In 1996, she won a legal battle that gave her the rights to the name Berlin, which John Crawford had chosen for the band. She reformed the band with a new lineup, and Berlin began recording and touring in 1997. In 1999, Berlin opened for American all-female rock band The Go-Go’s on their reunion tour. (The Go-Go’s have three songs on this list of THE TOP 500 POP SONGS OF THE 1980S, and lead singer Belinda Carlisle has two solo songs.)

In 2004, as part of U.S. music channel VH1’s Bands Reunited series, Terri Nunn reunited with all of the original members of Berlin (watch it here). The band continues to record new material and tour, often with some of the original bandmembers, including John Crawford. In 2020, Berlin released their ninth album, Strings Attached, which includes re-recordings of some of the band’s previous songs, backed by a full orchestra. The new recording of Take My Breath Away features The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and The Slovenia Symphonic Film Orchestra.

Take My Breath Away is featured in the following films: 2001’s Ocean’s 11, 2006’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (the song plays when the title character sees Canadian-American actress Pamela Anderson on TV for the first time), 2010’s Going the Distance, 2017’s Despicable Me 3, 2017’s Death Note, and 2019’s Corpus Christi. Take My Breath Away is referenced in the 2012 film Captain America: The First Avenger; a character says, “I can think of some folks in Berlin who are about to get very nervous,” and another character responds, “Yep, after they do Take My Breath Away from the Top Gun soundtrack, they’re pretty much through.” Some of the television shows that have featured Take My Breath Away include The King Of Queens in 2002, Dancing With the Stars in 2006, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in 2007, Glee in 2012 (watch the scene here), and Brooklyn Nine-Nine in 2019. In 1990, the National Basketball Association included Take My Breath Away as part of a tribute to Michael Jordan in an NBA Superstars video documentary.

Before Berlin recorded Take My Breath Away, it was offered to American new wave band The Motels, who recorded a demo version, but the Top Gun producers rejected it. The Motels’ demo was released in 2001. Two songs by The Motels almost made this list of THE TOP 500 POP SONGS OF THE 1980S: Only the Lonely (#545) and Suddenly Last Summer (#649).

Take My Breath Away has been covered by many artists representing a wide variety of music genres from all over the world, including the following:

• Italian singer Cristiano Malgioglio in 1986 (click here)

• French singer/songwriter Gérard Lenorman in 1986 (click here)

• German singer Ute Berling in 1986 (click here)

• The London Symphony Orchestra in 1987 (click here)

• English instrumental rock group The Shadows in 1987 (click here)

• Taiwanese singer Tracy Huang in 1987 (click here)

• Turkish singer Neşe Karaböcek in 1987 (click here)

• Czech singer Petra Janů in 1987 (click here)

• French pianist Richard Clayderman in 1987 (click here; it’s a medley with British-Irish musician Chris de Burgh’s The Lady In Red, song #361 on this list)

• Belgian classical guitarist Francis Goya in 1988 (click here)

• Slovak pianist Peter Breiner in 1990 (click here)

• British a cappella group The Flying Pickets in 1994 (click here)

• German electronic dance music DJ Jan Wayne featuring Charlene in Dance in 2002 (click here)

• U.K. remix artists Soda Club featuring Hannah Alethea in 2002 (click here)

• American rock band Copeland in 2004 (click here)

• American singer Jessica Simpson in 2004 (click here; her version was a moderate hit in the U.S., Australia, Belgium, France, and Canada)

• American rock band My Morning Jacket in 2004 (click here)

• American singer Diana Ross in 2006 (click here)

• English musician Gordon Haskell in 2008 (click here)

• Scottish alternative rock musician Sharleen Spiteri in 2010 (click here)

• German new age band Gregorian in 2012 (click here)

• Latin pop group OV7 in 2012 (click here)

• American rock band We Are Scientists in 2013 (click here)

• British singer-songwriter Will Young in 2015 (click here)

• Dutch singer/songwriter Duncan Laurence in 2022 (click here)

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In 2013, Take My Breath Away surged in popularity after being sampled in several songs, including American rapper Trick Daddy’s 2012 song They Took My Dog Away, American rapper Juvenile’s 2012 song Take My Breath, American singer Lloyd’s 2012 song Do It Again, and American rapper Brianna Perry’s 2013 song (featuring American singer/songwriter Teyana Taylor) Take My Breath Away.

Terri Nunn has remained in the spotlight for more than just music. She hosted a podcast and a radio show. In 2010, she was a guest judge on American reality competition TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race, and mentored the contestants in a singing challenge. Although her acting career didn’t take off, she said that her acting experience helped her with Take My Breath Away: “In acting, I’d learned a lot about channeling emotion. I was alone. I’d been so busy with the band, I’d not had a relationship for four years. So I sang [Take My Breath Away] from a feeling of sadness and longing, and maybe that’s what resonated. It taught me that the most important thing is to sing a song from honesty, whatever it is for me at that time... The thing that people comment on is how sad I sound because I was. I was sad.” Terri Nunn has a Master’s Degree in Applied Human Nutrition. She became a vegetarian at the age of 19, and then became vegan in 2011 after reading The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted by T. Colin Campbell.

A sequel to Top Gun was released in 2022. Before the film’s release, when asked if Take My Breath Away would be featured in Top Gun: Maverick, Terri Nunn said, “All we heard was there’s talk that they’re putting it...in the movie, like, he [Tom Cruise] goes into a bar and hears it and says, ‘Oh, I really like that song!’ Which would be very cool!” But it turns out that Take My Breath Away is not featured in the sequel. (The movie does begin with the other huge hit from the original Top Gun, Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins.) Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski explained to CinemaBlend, “Take My Breath Away is an incredible song, but it’s really connected with that relationship (between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis), you know? So for Maverick...we needed something new.”

Terri Nunn told ABC News Radio in 2020, “[Take My Breath Away] was a gift in my life that just keeps on giving. I’m in awe of it because it just keeps going. People never seem to get tired of it. Some things...they take off and they have their own lives. Take My Breath Away...it’s one of those songs, you know?”