What Happens

When Lady Gaga sang the song at the Oscars, it wasn’t just a great moment for film but for TV.

50 survivors took the stage with her, and as songwriter Diane Warren said, the room was reduced to tears. Vice President Joe Biden introduced the number, and spoke out on campus sexual assault as part of It’s On Us, a movement to call men to action in stopping these crimes.

The song in question, “’Til It Happens to You,” like a lot of Diane Warren’s songs – and there’ve been dozens: big ballads, love songs, showstoppers – has the power to wreck you, even before you know exactly what it’s about. Even if you haven’t seen the film on which it’s based.

The strength of the music and the vocal performance by her co-writer, Lady Gaga, makes it another unforgettable entry in Warren’s three decades of song writing.

“’Til It Happens to You” is the theme for The Hunting Ground, an acclaimed CNN Films documentary about survivors of college campus sexual assault and what its creators say is a failure to address the crimes properly. And while the song exists to shine a light on survivors, it’s also something of an anthem for empathy.

Dozens of prognosticators had been predicting it to win. And yes, Warren said, later, at an event in Las Vegas, Vice President Biden even asked, “What happened at the Oscars?”

“I’ve lost a lot of times,” said the eight-time Oscar nominee. “And that’s never happened to me.”

So, Warren is open about her hopes for the song’s chance at an Emmy, a possibility because the film played on CNN.

“Yes, I was shocked and usually when I lose I’m not shocked. But yes, this time, it hurt, I’m going to be honest,” she said “Everybody was saying, ‘it’s going to win,’ ‘it’s going to win,’ and all these predictions, everybody had it winning. All my friends were going over my Oscar speech. I’m like, ‘maybe we shouldn’t do that.’ So, yes, it hurt.”

But, like the professional she is, she got right back into her studio to write, which she does every day. Her track “This is for My Girls” featuring performances by Kelly Clarkson, Chloe & Halle, Missy Elliott, Jadagrace, Lea Michele, Janelle Monáe, Kelly Rowland and Zendaya, was recently released to benefit charities supporting young women’s education globally, including First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let Girls Learn initiative.

When she writes, she says, she wants to tap into a universal connection. And, she’s grateful for everything her career has brought her, acknowledging how lucky she’s been to be at the White House with the Obamas and other leaders, because of her work. We spoke to her about how she writes music that moves people.

So, this is a tough interview because you’ve done so much, I could talk to you for hours about your work over the years. But we’re close to Emmy nominations time and with the Grammys and Oscars attention for The Hunting Ground and your song for it, “’Til It Happens to You,” it seems likely you’ll be nominated. It was a frontrunner for the Oscar (for best original song). Were you surprised by the outcome?

Yeah, the Oscars thing...boy I’ve been nominated a lot … I’m like the Susan Lucci of Oscars so it’s kind of cool maybe I can be in her world here, with the actual Emmy.

Almost every Oscars preview I saw had you predicted to win.

And that was really – I’ve been nominated a lot and I usually don’t think I’m going to win but this year I was like, “God, how did that not win?” Not in an egotistical way but after Joe Biden with his beautiful speech and Gaga’s performance which to me – not just because it was my song - I just thought that was one of the most amazing performances, like ever.

That performance was incredible. What was it like live?

The whole place was in tears and it was so affecting, just the look in her eyes. She hit notes that are almost impossible to hit and – she went up an octave, and hitting it one time is incredible and she hit it nine times because she was singing from her soul. I’d never seen anything like that and then it’s like the winner is… and I was like, “What?” and Gaga said it too, “What just happened, what just happened.”

But the song has so much life, between The Hunting Ground itself and then the video on YouTube (directed by Catherine Hardwicke). What does that kind of reach feel like?

The video has more than 31 million views and Gaga is not even in it. Catherine Hardwicke wanted to make it and it just kind of forced the song to come out because the video got five million views in a day.

It’s crazy because sexual assault, no one talks about it, it is in the shadows. Look, I was molested as a kid and [writing the song for The Hunting Ground] got me to talk about it [at a] a New York Times talk with Gaga and with [Hunting Ground producer] Amy Ziering and [writer/director] Kirby Dick.

Was that the first time you talked about it?

Publicly, yeah. I’d told a couple people about it but what the song is – the power of the song which I don’t want to sound egotistical or conceited  -- but I think the song is one of the most important songs in a while because it’s not only starting the conversation, it’s keeping the conversation going. It’s letting people be in on the conversation.

Every day, I get letters about it, or people at the coffee shop telling me their life story. Gaga was telling me that she literally can’t walk down the street without someone coming up to talk  about the song and what it’s done for them, how its helped them. It’s a very healing song.

So, this is your job, songwriting and I know you do it all the time but how did you approach writing this? Did you see the film first, or did you come at it just knowing the subject matter?

I heard the story through a friend of mine, Bonnie Greenberg. She’s a music supervisor and I’ve known her for a long time. She told me about the movie. It wasn’t finished at the time.

She told me about some of these girls’ stories and I’m like, “oh sh*t, I have to write this song, I really want to do it.” She said, “there’s no money” and I said, “I don’t care, I’m not doing for the money, I just think it’s an important project to be involved in.”

I was inspired and wrote the song and I called Gaga. She’d been on Howard Stern and talked about [her own sexual assault]. I thought, “I’m going to take a chance, play it for her and it can go either way. She might respond or she might get mad, who knows.” But she was crying when she heard it.

She flew out and we started working on it. She put that Gaga thing in it and she really made it, took it to another level, really. It really worked out amazing.

[Record producer] David Foster said you amaze him because you are able to write these songs totally on your own. So if you typically work on your own, how did you decide to reach out to Lady Gaga as a partner for this?

I’ve always wanted to work with her, she’s one of the best artists on the planet right now. In my opinion, she’s a real artist. I think that’s what she’s shown in the last couple of years; she’s not just all the outfits or whatever. Underneath it is a driven, real artist who really works at her craft. I go to her house and she’ll be working with her vocal coach for two hours a day and I’m like that’s why she will be around [years from now].

I had seen her actually at a City of Hope event and she sang, “You’ve Got a Friend” just on the piano.

I thought, “Oh, she’s so f*cking great” and people hadn’t seen that side of her but I did. From that moment, I had to work with her. I was just obsessed. Then this came about and I decided to play her the song and she loved it and then she made it her own.

What spin did she put on it?

It was kind of more somber how I did it and she made it this epic rock ballad that’s a defiant thing. What’s interesting, too, is that the movie has three parts where these girls start out as victims then they get empowered and then at the end they are activists.

Similar to the trajectory in the shorter Catherine Hardwicke video.

Right, they follow the same path: You see what goes on, the horror of what happens, and then you see them in the aftermath of it, then they’re getting strong. And in the end they are marching down the hallway like it’s like, “F*ck you, you are not f*cking with me, I’m not a f*cking victim.”

Weirdly, Gaga’s performance mirrors that because she starts out, first as a victim. First chorus, she’s a victim. Second verse, she’s pissed off, she’s getting more and more pissed off. By the end of that song she’s, “F*ck you.”

Gaga said, “You wouldn’t want to meet me in an alley at the end of that song.” That’s what she brought to it. My arrangement was all kind of sad and she put the “f*ck you” in it - definitely arrangement-wise and performance-wise, she vocally just f*cking annihilated it.

But when you listen, the song really touches on empathy in general. [The song has also been featured on videos about gun violence and animal cruelty, for example.] How do you make that decision when you’re writing a song for a film about sexual assault to not be on the nose, but still get that impact and emotion across?  

Whenever I write a song for movie, first I want the song to work within that movie. That’s the first thing that has to happen. But it’s really important to me that the song can mean whatever it wants to mean to somebody else. To somebody that hasn’t seen the movie, maybe.

Like I wrote “Because You Loved Me” (performed by Celine Dion) for the film Up Close and Personal and it was about Michelle Pfeiffer’s husband in the film, Robert Redford, who dies and she’s thanking him. And it’s become one of the biggest wedding songs in the last 20 years.

Because people see themselves in it?

They take it and make it their own. It means whatever it wants to mean outside of [the film]. So it’s the same thing with “’Til It Happens to You.” You can hear that song on its own and just go, “Wow, I was bullied at school” and identify with it.

On the YouTube video, I saw a comment from someone who said, “I know this is about sexual assault but I’ve been dealing with mental illness and this song really speaks to me, and makes me strong.” So it can be whatever you wanted it to be.

So what is your process like?

I sit and write and I come up with ideas and just try to figure them out. For this, I just knew the title and those opening chords. I was sitting there and it kind of came to me.

The start of it and the title?

Yeah, I had that and was thinking “’Til it happens to you, you don't know how it feels,” I just wanted to just capture that.

Did you, when you’re writing think about your own experience or were you just thinking about that film?

I was thinking about what I’d heard about the girls’ stories and again I’m always very conscious of the fact that I wanted the song to stand on its own too. I didn’t make any specific [references to rape].

I wanted to write something emotional, because you just wanted to go to someone’s heart, bypass everything and just go right to your heart and just make someone feel right what that movie is about. When I do a song for a movie, I want you to feel it.

Because you are as prolific as you are, everyone wants to know the secret.

I mean, I just show up. When people ask what’s the secret to your success, it’s that I show up and I do the work. I get to work about 8:30 or quarter to nine and I just sit down and write and I just work. I just like to be inspired and I don’t sit around and wait for inspiration. I sit down and I find it and I write, and have a lot of coffee first.

Do you work out of home or an office?

I work out of my office and I have like keyboards and I have a guitar and I just show up and I work and I love it, I love writing.

Do you get a feeling when you write, if something’s going to take off?

It’s so interesting the way things work. With “Til It Happens to You,” who knew at the time that it would become this huge anthem. I had no idea, but with the movie and the video and Gaga, it just went way above and beyond what I ever thought it was going to be. It’s taken on a life of its own.

Sometimes, you write a song and you never know what’s going to happen. Nothing could happen or they could really surprise you. So, even when it didn’t win at the Oscars, it has this amazing life.

It goes way beyond all that, beyond any awards really. The reward is really – the reward is almost worth more than the award although the award would have been nice.

But the reward of it is just the power of what the song is doing and how it’s changing things and how it’s really healing a lot of people.