Wind Beneath My Wings

🎵 Sing along with the full lyrics at LyricFind

---

“Wind Beneath My Wings” was written in 1982 in Nashville by songwriters Larry Henley and Jeff Silbar. Fun twist: Henley was no stranger to the spotlight himself — back in 1964, his was the soaring falsetto voice on The Newbeats’ hit “Bread and Butter.” The ballad he co-wrote nearly two decades later bounced around for years looking for a home. Easy-listening favorite Roger Whittaker released it first in 1982, Sheena Easton cut it that same year, Lou Rawls and Gladys Knight took their turns, and Gary Morris scored a Top 5 country hit with it in 1983 that won both the ACM and CMA Song of the Year awards. A fine résumé — but the song was still waiting for its moment.

That moment arrived when Bette Midler sang it in the 1988 tearjerker Beaches, as a tribute to a dying best friend. Released as a single in early 1989, her version soared to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and swept the two biggest Grammy Awards of the night — Record of the Year and Song of the Year — in 1990. Midler took a song that a half-dozen artists had already recorded and turned it into the anthem of gratitude, now a fixture at graduations, weddings, and memorials everywhere. It even ranked #44 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest songs in American movie history. Sometimes a song just has to wait seven years for the right voice.