Up Where We Belong just feel it." Hackford said that "the final version was absolute magic—or at least Joel and I thought so." They now had to present this song that they weren't budgeted to make to the executives at Paramount. "When we played it for Michael Eisner and Don Simpson, they hated the record and said it would never be a hit." Simpson even bet Sill $100 that it wouldn't be. Hackford and Sill "called another prominent record executive, who said, 'Forget it. Jennifer Warnes has never had a hit song and Joe Cocker's a has-been. Eisner and Simpson made Hackford "meet with
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