Waiting For A Star To Fall

Album

Reel Life

Label

RCA Records

Genre

Dance-pop

Composer(s)

George Merrill;Shannon Rubicam

Entered Chart

Sep 10, 1988

Peak Date

Dec 17, 1988

Released

June 10, 1988

Recorded

Unknown

Catalog #

RCA 8691

B-Side

No Apologies

Boy Meets Girl are American songwriters George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam. They spoke with us about this song and explained how they got together: Shannon: "We met at a large Seattle socialite wedding for one of the Boeing daughters of Boeing Airplanes. Then we met again later when I went to see George and his singing partner at the time at a club and thought, 'Wow, they're really good. And cute.'" George: "I had been pretty smitten by Shannon when I first saw her at the wedding. It was Susan Boeing of Boeing Companies, and all the Seattle musicians at the time were hired to perform some function at the wedding, either performing at the wedding or the after party or something. I was singing in the choir in the loft, and Shannon was singing the solo, so her voice was going out throughout the entire church, and I thought, 'Oh my goodness, where did that voice come from?'" Shannon: "We met a year later and I ended up joining his duo at the time to make it a trio so we could have extra harmony layers. We played the Seattle club scene and up and down the coast, until we got stone tired of playing clubs and dealing with people who were on their way to being drunk, and then well past that line. We ended up moving down to Los Angeles after we wrote and recorded a batch of songs, and sent tapes out and actually got a response from one of those wild card tapes we sent out." George and Shannon wrote Whitney Houston's hits "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)." They got the idea for this song when they were at a Whitney Houston concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles: Shannon: "It's a beautiful venue. It's an outdoor kind of amphitheater built on the Greek forum idea, and so it has an open air - no ceiling. Whitney had just finished playing How Will I Know." George: "It was a big night for us. There we are in a crowd of 8,000 people standing on their feet cheering to one of our songs." Shannon: "It was cool. At the end I looked up at the sky - because it was a clear night, the stars were out - and a star just shot across the sky just right through the middle of the dome. I just quickly jotted down a line, 'Waiting for a star to fall,' and stuffed it back in my purse. As we were driving home, I told George about it, and said, 'I think I'll write a lyric around that.' We thought, 'That's fortuitous, we got the idea at a Whitney concert, we should send it to Clive (Davis) for Whitney for her next album.' So we did, and he sent it back saying it wasn't what they were looking for because they were doing a little bit of a direction shift with her. So we thought, 'Well, we'll just do it ourselves, cool.' So it worked out fine for us to do it." George and Shannon got married after Reel Life was released, but they were going through a great deal of turmoil in their relationship while they were writing the album: Shannon: "Things were difficult to talk through sometimes. We just ended up keeping our musical diary going and that really was our uniting factor. So a lot of the songs are reflective of that, even if they sound initially upbeat musically, I think really it was a tough time for us, and thank God for music." George: "Yeah, and there was a level at which I think Shannon and I had a mutual admiration for each other and the process of writing together. And also, it's a relationship thing where if Shannon needed to get a thought out musically, I wanted to assist her, and I think it was both ways: if we had a song that was kind of a sensitive topic, there was a level that the two of us would just write our way through it." Shannon: "It's a lament for what appears to be unattainable to you. It does have some poignancy, it did for us at that time." Arif Mardin, who did a lot of work with Aretha Franklin, produced the album. This is the song that convinced him to work with Boy Meets Girl, and he helped secure the song for them. After Whitney Houston turned down the song, Robert Palmer heard it and wanted it for an artist he was producing, so he put a hold on the song, which is kind of a gentleman's agreement giving him rights to the song for a while. Arif thought George and Shannon should record it and was friends with Palmer, so he called Robert and convinced him to relinquish the song. In 2004, Mylo did a mash-up of this with "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes for a song called "In My Arms." In March 2005, this song was remixed by both Cabin Crew and Sunset Strippers, with the Cabin Crew version hitting #4 UK and Sunset Strippers reaching #3. Says Shannon, "It's really an honor when a decade and more later, somebody hears your song and they've got an inspiration about it. And I even read, I think it was Mylo, saying, 'This is one of the most saccharine love songs I've ever heard,' and yet he used it. There was something about it that caught his ear. So once I got over my momentary offense with that, I thought, 'You know, this is cool, he used it, it's fun, it's his version of creativity.' Adds George, "I really loved that he had this little sultry groove that he'd come up with. It actually had a real slinky sort of cocktail hour groove and was very cool. But the one that really caught my ear was Cabin Crew. They were an Australian couplet, remixers, that did a really cool, real tight sort of a pop song rehash of Waiting For A Star To Fall the chorus, and it was just a really tight arrangement. I was really impressed with what they did." George and Shannon were married throughout the '90s and broke up around 2000. They have a daughter together and continue their musical partnership. In 2003, they released The Wonderground, an album dealing with the complexities and emotions of their relationship. (Thanks to George and Shannon for speaking with us about this song. Check out the Boy Meets Girl website at www.boymeetsgirlmusic.com.) This was played under the ending credits of the movie Three Men And A Little Lady. >>

I hear your name whispered on the wind
It's a sound that makes me cry
I hear a song blow again and again
Through my mind and I don't know why
I wish I didn't feel so strong about you
Like happiness and love revolve around you

Trying to catch your heart
Is like trying to catch a star
So many people love you, baby
That must be what you are

Waiting for a star to fall
And carry your heart into my arms
That's where you belong
In my arms baby, yeah

Waiting for a star to fall
And carry your heart into my arms
That's where you belong
In my arms baby, yeah

I've learned to feel what I cannot see
But with you I lose that vision
I don't know how to dream your dream
So I'm all caught up in the superstition
I want to reach out and pull you to me
Who says I should let a wild one go free?

Trying to catch your heart
Is like trying to catch a star
I can't love you this much, baby
And love you from this far

Waiting for a star to fall
And carry your heart into my arms
That's where you belong
In my arms baby, yeah (yeah)

Waiting for a star to fall
And carry your heart into my arms
That's where you belong
In my arms baby, yeah

Waiting (however long)
I don't like waiting (I'll wait for you)
It's so hard waiting (don't be too long)
Seems like waiting (waiting)
Makes me love you even more

Waiting for a star to fall
And carry your heart into my arms
That's where you belong
In my arms baby, yeah (yeah)

Waiting for a star to fall
Carry your heart (carry your heart) into my arms
That's where you belong
In my arms baby, yeah (yeah)

Waiting for a star to fall
Carry your heart into my arms
That's where you belong
In my arms baby, yeah (yeah)

(Oh) Waiting for a star to fall
Carry your heart into my arms
That's where you belong
In my arms baby, yeah (ohh)