Movie Music Monday – Dirty Dancing

Today would have been Patrick Swayze’s 73rd birthday. So it’s only fair to focus on his movie hit – She’s Like the Wind from Dirty Dancing.

“She’s Like The Wind” is featured in the 1987 film Dirty Dancing in the scene where Patrick Swayze says goodbye to Jennifer Grey after their summer fling.  He tells her, “I’ll never be sorry.” Her reply: “Neither will I.”

Swayze doesn’t sing it on camera, making it a rare case where the star of a film soundtracks his own scene.

Songfacts.com says that this wasn’t written for Dirty Dancing. Swayze wrote the song with his friend Stacy Widelitz for a movie he was shooting in 1984 called Grandview, U.S.A. 

Swayze had the basic chords and the opening lyrics (“She’s like the wind, through my tree…”). They hashed out the song over the next few days, but it was rejected for the film. Two years later, Swayze was working on Dirty Dancing, and he played the demo of the song for the producers, who gave it the green light. They recorded a proper version with Michael Lloyd producing, and the song became a big part of the soundtrack, which sold over 30 million copies and spent 18 weeks at #1 in the US. It was the first song Patrick Swayze released.

The song was the third hit from the movie soundtrack.  The film itself was released in August of 1987.  The first single, “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” hit #1 US in November. The next single, “Hungry Eyes” reached #4 in February, and “She’s Like The Wind” landed at #3 later that month.

Songfacts.com says that Patrick Swayze was big into music, but there was far more demand for his acting than his singing. He did a duet with Larry Gatlin called “Brothers” for the soundtrack of his 1989 film Next Of Kin, and has two songs on the soundtrack to Road House, another film his starred in that year. His 2003 film One Last Dance also featured two Swayze songs on the soundtrack, but “She’s Like The Wind” was his only hit, making Swayze one of the more high-profile one-hit wonders.

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Patrick!