Life
The song I wrote for The Tattooist of Auschwitz is my most profound ever
The song Barbra Streisand sang for the TV series is up for an Emmy. I meet the man who wrote its lyrics
August 7, 2024 12:52
The song Barbra Streisand sang for the TV series is up for an Emmy. I meet the man who wrote its lyrics
August 7, 2024 12:52When songwriter and producer Charlie Midnight received a call to write the lyrics for the Barbra Streisand-sung theme for television series The Tattooist of Auschwitz, his first thought was that it was “a little intimidating”.
It wasn’t the first time he had collaborated with Streisand, having co-written her duet with Andrea Bocelli on her 2014 Grammy-nominated album Partners, but it was the first time he had tackled the Holocaust in his work. It made Love Will Survive “the most profound songwriting experience” he’d ever had. “I had written for James Brown, Joni Mitchell and Joe Cocker and all these people… And those are rewarding, but this was profound,” he says.
The song has now been nominated for an Emmy award, Midnight’s first Emmy nomination among his Grammy (as writer for James Brown’s Living In America) and two Golden Globe nods. And the musician is “proud” of it.
While Love Will Survive is Streisand’s first original song for a television series, Midnight is no stranger to TV soundtracks, with credits on Daisy Does America and Big Time Rush, and on more than 30 films including Hollywood blockbuster The Bodyguard. As with any screen commission, he asked to see a clip for inspiration, but because of the fast-approaching release date, straight after the call from his songwriting partner Walter Afanasieff, he went out and bought Heather Morris’s bestselling book on which the series was based. He read it in one sitting and was instantly inspired.
“It gave me chills. The story is hard, but it’s miraculous that these two people survived and connected with each other after everything they had gone through.”
He continues, “Before I saw any clips, I sat down and I wrote a lyric to Walter’s amazing melody. I was inspired immediately.”
While the lyrics came quickly for Midnight, he was cautious given the topic.
“I never know exactly what people want – I can only get inspired. So I didn’t go as heavy in the lyrics as I would have wanted to. Then they said they wanted it a little more intense, which was a big surprise.”
He duly made the tweaks and everyone was happy. “Barbra liked it. She just needed me to switch one lyric. This was all done in days. That doesn’t happen a lot, but this was one of those special occasions. And I think it’s because it was a team of people working for a single purpose, this film, which is profound and meaningful. Everybody thought it was more important than just doing a song for a movie. And being Jewish, it’s really affected me, as it did Barbra.”
He feels The Tattooist of Auschwitz is not unique to Jewish people as it depicts an event in history that everyone has a responsibility to remember, and is also a universal story of hope and survival.
“You have to constantly remember the Holocaust in order to put things that happens afterwards in perspective,” he says, recalling his father’s role as a soldier in the US army fighting in the Second World War. When the war was over, he was sent to the liberated concentration camps.
“He didn’t like to talk about it,” says Midnight, “But we were brought up with that thought of ‘never forget’. I think it was very traumatic for him. He did mention that it’s something that you never want to see, something that is just etched indelibly...”
And while the horror of the Holocaust hung silently over the family home, Midnight’s best friend in childhood was a German Jew whose mother was a concentration camp survivor.
“And she did talk about it, and it was harrowing,” he says. “I think she felt that talking about it helped.”
For Streisand there was a deep pull towards going back to the studio. In a post on X/Twitter she has said that she wanted to sing the song for the series, “because of the rise in antisemitism around the world today… as a way of remembering the six million souls who were lost less than 80 years ago. And also to say that even in the darkest of times, the power of love can triumph and endure.”
Midnight recalls how the production company for the show was set on Streisand being the vocalist. “They didn’t think anybody else had not only the artistic integrity but also the gravitas to sing the title song for this. She is one of the greatest voices, if not the greatest. She is such a pure artist.”
Carrying the theme of the show, which tells the story of Lali Sokolov (played by Jonah Hauer-King) and Gita (Anna Próchniak) whom he met and fell in love with in Auschwitz when he tattooed her, Love Will Survive plays with the end credits of every episode. It grew from a theme composed by Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer and Kara Talve.
“Barbra loved the piece of music, but she said it’s not a song,” says Midnight who, like Streisand is Jew who grew up in Brooklyn. Midnight’s longtime associate Afanasieff – who won a Grammy award for his work on Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On – was in charge of turning it into a song, including the sweeping strings he arranged with Bill Ross, and which are played by the London Symphony Orchestra.
Love Will Survive might be his “most profound songwriting experience” but there is stiff competition for that description in a 40-year career that has involved collaborations with the likes of Billy Joel, Seal, Hilary Duff, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
The world in which he mingles today is a far cry from his upbringing in the half-Jewish, half-Italian working-class neighbourhood of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where his father was a factory worker and his mother typed to make extra money.
“I have to say, my dreams have all been met,” he says with a smile. Dreams that you might not associate with his formative years. “The rich guy of my neighbourhood owned his own cab, the second richest was a waiter in a fancy restaurant in Manhattan. My dream is to continue to do this forever.”