Fame

Fame was a 1980 movie about students at Fiorello LaGuardia High, also known as the New York City High School for the Performing Arts. It's a real school whose alumni include Robert De Niro, Jennifer Aniston, Liza Minnelli and Nicki Minaj. The movie was fictional, following some of the students who aspired to stardom. Irene Cara played the role of Coco Hernandez in the film and also sang this title song. The song captured the spirit of the students determined to make sure people remember their names.

Lesley Gore's brother, Michael Gore, was the musical supervisor on Fame and responsible for coming up with the songs for the movie. He wrote this song with Dean Pitchford, a stage and commercial actor with a degree in English literature from Yale. Pitchford studied songwriting with Peter Allen ("I Honestly Love You," "Don't Cry Out Loud"); Gore gave him a big break when he asked him to write some lyrics for the movie. Pitchford co-wrote the title song and also "I Sing the Body Electric" and "Red Light," which were included in the film. When Songfacts spoke with Pitchford in 2012, he said: "At the time it was exactly what I had been living for the last six or seven years in New York. Had I stopped that and gotten further away from it in years, perhaps it wouldn't have been as heartfelt as it was. But both 'Fame' and 'The Body Electric' were both real available to me." Gore and Pitchford later collaborated on "All The Man I Need," which was a hit for Whitney Houston in 1990. Soon after Fame, Pitchford started work on his screenplay that would become Footloose.

Dean Pitchford tells us that this song took about a month to write. "That was excruciating, because it was very tough to navigate," he said. "You know, the idea of fame is such a pumped up, almost self-congratulatory notion, like, I'm going to be famous. It was very tricky to navigate and write something that still had energy and gosh-golly about it, without feeling too self-satisfied."