February 23 In History: Historic Grammy Awards Set Two Winners For The Song Of The Year Category

Grammy Awards Trophy (Source: Commons Wikimedia)

JAKARTA - For the first time in history, the Grammy Awards failed to determine a single winner. On February 23, 1978, Love Theme from A Star Is Born (Evergreen) by Barbra Streisand and You Light Up My Life by Debby Boone were both awarded Song of the Year by the Grammy Awards.

Cited from History, Tuesday, February 23, 2021, the award given to You Light Up My Life is not actually an award for Debby Boone. The Song of the Year category is an award for songwriters.

And although You Light Up My Life pushed Boone to the Best New Artist award that year, she didn't write the song herself. Joe Brooks was awarded a Grammy for Song of the Year for a song originally sung by an unknown singer, which was used in the soundtrack of the film of the same name he also directed.

Debby Boone's record label found the song and had it record after the film was made. For ten weeks, the album was amazing, continuing to top the pop charts in the fall of 1977.

Joe Brooks, who wrote You Light Up My Life, later shared another memory of that evening, when he pointed out that many of the music professionals present actually rejected the song. He finally added the sentence, "It tastes very sweet."

Meanwhile, Love Theme from A Star Is Born (Evergreen) was written with Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams. Both are recipients of Grammy awards on more than one occasion.

Songs from movies

Like You Light Up My Life, Evergreen is also from the film. The witty side of Williams gave a memorable Grammy acceptance speech to thank a doctor for giving him "some incredible Valium that got me through the whole experience".

For Barbra Streisand, that evening was the answer to a very good question: Who was the only person who won a Grammy Award and an Oscar? In 1968, Barbra Streisand also won the Best Actress category for her performance in Funny Girl.

Ultimately, this 20th Grammy Awards is a night that has many to recognize many of the best and most popular singers on the West Coast rock scene. Ada Eagles won Record Of The Year for Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac received Album Of The Year for Rumors, and Steely Dan's Aja took home the award for Best Engineered Recording —Non-Classical.

John Williams won Grammy Awards for Best Original Score Written For A Motion Picture or A Television Special and Best Instrumental Composition for his music in Star Wars.