Hungry Eyes - From "Dirty Dancing" Soundtrack

Look for a musical interlude about an hour into many movies - especially romantic comedies - which is when audiences start to tire of dialogue. In the movie Dirty Dancing, this song provided the soundtrack to Jennifer Grey's undercover dance lessons with Patrick Swayze. The song was not only a key piece of the movie, but helped the soundtrack sell over 48 million copies worldwide.

Eric Carmen is best known as one of the founding members of The Raspberries and writer of "All By Myself," "Almost Paradise" (Ann Wilson and Mike Reno) and other hits of his own like "Make Me Lose Control." This is one of the few songs Eric recorded that he did not write. He was asked to do it by his old Raspberries producer Jimmy Ienner, who was the musical director for Dirty Dancing.

This song was co-written by John DeNicola and Franke Previte, who also wrote another huge hit from Dirty Dancing, "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." Previte was the singer and DeNicola was the bass player in the '80s Pop group Franke & the Knockouts, who had a hit with "Sweetheart." The group recorded for Millennium Records, which was helmed by Jimmy Ienner, who asked Franke for songs when he was producing the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Previte told us: "Jimmy had closed his label and 'Hungry Eyes' was a song on my demo reel, because I was trying to get a new recording contract. No one thought the song had a chance. I guess history proves them wrong."