Beaches

Beaches: Original Soundtrack Recording is the soundtrack to the Academy Award-nominated 1988 film starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey. Midler performs most of the tracks on the album, released on the Atlantic Records label. The album also reunited her with producer Arif Mardin. It features one of Midler's best-known songs, the ballad "Wind Beneath My Wings", which was a number-one hit. Background The original script merely indicated that "traditional music" was to be played at certain times. Marc Shaiman, Midler's longtime music arranger, served as music supervisor for the film, and the two of them worked together to determine what songs Midler could sing for the film. Shaiman was already a fan of "Wind Beneath My Wings" and suggested the song to Midler. Songs The track that was chosen to promote both the movie and the album was not "Wind Beneath My Wings", but the song heard in the movie's opening scene and also the opening track on the album: Midler's cover of The Drifters' 1960s classic "Under the Boardwalk". That song alluded to the title of the movie and the place where the movie's main characters, rich girl Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey) and child performer Cecilia Carol "CC" Bloom (Midler) first meet. Midler's version of "Under the Boardwalk", released to tie in with the premiere in December 1988, peaked outside the Billboard Hot 100 chart and passed by mostly unnoticed, although it reached the Top 30 of the ARIA singles chart in Australia. "Wind Beneath My Wings", which had been recorded by several other artists before Midler in the early 1980s, among them Sheena Easton, Roger Whittaker, Gary Morris, Perry Como, Gladys Knight & the Pips and Lou Rawls, was released as the second single in February 1989, following the box office success of the movie. The song instantly became a number-one hit on the US singles chart, reached number 2 on the Adult Contemporary chart, number 3 in the UK, number 1 in Australia and was a top 10 hit single in many other parts of the world. Midler's recording of the song was later awarded a platinum disc by the RIAA for sales exceeding one million copies in the US alone. It also won Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards of 1990, and remains Midler's signature tune to this day. The recording of the song appearing in the film is notably different from the one released on the soundtrack, and the movie also includes an orchestral version over the end credits.