Up Where We Belong Up Where We Belong "Up Where We Belong" is a song written by Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings that was recorded by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for the 1982 film "An Officer and a Gentleman". Warnes was recommended to sing a song from the film because of her previous soundtrack successes, and she had the idea for the song to be a duet that she would perform with Cocker. Jennings selected various sections of the score by Nitsche and Sainte-Marie in creating the structure of the song and added lyrics about the struggles of life and love
Up Where We Belong Best Original Song. They also won the BAFTA film award for Best Original Song in 1984. On the Songs of the Century list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001 the song was listed at number 323. In 2004 it finished at number 75 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema, and in 2016 one of the duo's live renditions of the song was listed at number 18 on "Rolling Stone"'s list of the 20 Greatest Best Song Oscar Performances. Warnes and Cocker kept to an agreement that they would never lip-sync