Songwriter Diane Warren’s hit list is unparalleled.
Nine No. 1 songs, 33 that climbed into the Top 10 and an enviable client list including Cher, Aerosmith,Celine Dion, Michael Bolton and Toni Braxton.
The bulk of her timeless trove was written in the ‘80s and ‘90s, a period when songwriters were appropriately compensated. So it’s a natural conclusion that Warren’s success begat significant wealth.
It’s an observation slyly noted by fellow songwriter and super producer David Foster, one of several music industry titans who appear in “Diane Warren: Relentless,” a 90-minute documentary chronicling the convergence of talent, luck and perseverance that shaped Warren’s career.
Why, he wonders with a bemused gleam in his eye, doesn’t someone as financially sound as Warren own a yacht?
That question is posed to her on a recent fall day in Middleburg, Virginia, where Warren, immediately identifiable by her dark cropped hair that hasn’t required a stylistic shift in decades and a T-shirt bearing an upside-down Snoopy, sits in front of a fireplace for a chat.
She chuckles at the question and launches an F-bomb – a word she sprinkles liberally in conversation – to underscore why nautical equipment will never enter her lifestyle.
“First of all, I get seasick,” she says. “Then to be on it and it’s like, what do you do, just sit there? I want to create.”
Relentless – the title of Warren’s documentary (available now on streaming platforms and nominated for a Grammy in February) – is the most obvious word to describe her.
Her unyielding drive is evident even while sitting with her for an hour inside a cozy room at the Salamander Resort, where she visited to promote her documentary at the Middleburg Film Festival.
Warren, 69, works constantly, going to her office in Los Angeles every day except Sundays, when she instead does some morning work in her sanctuary, the cluttered studio in her home.
In person, she excitedly bounces from talking about her new Kesha-sung heart-tugger, “Dear Me,” written for the close of the documentary, to her work as an executive producer – and songwriter, of course – for the Disney Channel’s musical comedy “Electric Bloom.”
She is constantly writing songs, but she is rarely listening to music.
“When I go home, I don’t want to listen to anything,” she says. “Because I’m writing, I’m doing music all day. I can’t listen to pop music. I listen analytically, so I’m going, why did they do that in the bridge? I would do this part differently. So honestly, when I’m home I just turn on some dark, weird, twisted TV show.”
Diane Warren reveals the song that made Lady Gaga cry
In addition to her renown as the wordsmith behind ubiquitous smashes ranging from Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” (a song the legendary singer “hated” initially) to Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” to LeAnn Rimes’ “How Do I Live,” Warren has also cultivated a reputation as the always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride at the Oscars.
She’s been nominated for best original song 16 times, yet still hasn’t landed the gold statue (the Academy did present her with an honorary award in 2022).
But Warren is unbowed. She’s submitted “Dear Me” for song consideration at the 2026 Oscars, as well as “Relentless” in the documentary field.
Her tight circle of friends has developed a ritual – shared in the film – of spending the night at Warren’s home before nominations are announced so they can watch the early morning roll call together.
Warren is always too nervous to sleep, but she approaches any impending nominations with a sanguine attitude even though she’s never technically won an Oscar.
“The win is the nomination,” she says. “Actually, there are several wins. I get to do what I love, let’s start there. I get to write songs for all these great movies or great artists … if you look at the music branch of the Academy, they are the best in their fields, whether they’re songwriters or composers or music editors. So if you’re chosen (for a nomination) by them, you’ve won. I don’t lose sight of that.”
But still, some losses have stung harder than others.
Warren cites “the Gaga year,” when her potent Lady Gaga collaboration “Till It Happens to You” from “The Hunting Ground,” the 2015 documentary about campus rape, as one of the times she was genuinely crushed to lose.
“That song meant so much,” Warren said. “(Gaga) started crying when I played it for her over the phone.”
Kesha had a similar reaction to hearing “Dear Me,” an emotionally wrought ballad Warren wrote as a letter to her younger self as an assurance that the sun will eventually peek through any turmoil.
“There was no one I wanted but Kesha. We all know her backstory and that she’s gone through a lot,” Warren says. “She had a rough childhood like I did, like, she could have been in juvenile hall with me. Like, I would have cut class with Kesha, you know?”
Diane Warren shares her favorite songs
In the documentary, Cher jokes that Warren’s favorite song is whatever she has most recently written.
It’s an assertation Warren doesn’t dismiss. Right now, she says, her favorite is “Dear Me,” but also others that “you don’t even know because they’re not out.”
But of her formidable hits parade, Warren cites “The Journey,” her Oscar-nominated song fronted by H.E.R. earlier this year as well as “I Was Here,” a worldwide hit for Beyoncé in 2011, as top picks.
“I’m so proud of that song. It might be my favorite line in a song – ‘I want to leave my footprints on the sands of time’,” she says.
Returning to her breakthrough years, Warren mentions “When I’m Back on My Feet Again,” an affecting ballad that Michael Bolton imbued with signature pathos in 1990.
“I wrote that after my dad passed away and I remember I felt like he was writing through me.”
Likewise “Because You Loved Me,” a massive hit for Celine Dion in 1996 that could be interpreted as romantic, but was written as a tribute to Warren’s father.
“It was a way to thank him,” she says.
Diane Warren has a love of animals and a distaste for AI
Along with her commitment to music, Warren, a vegan, is an ardent animal activist. In 2017, she purchased a 7-acre estate in Malibu to establish an animal sanctuary dubbed Mousebutt Rescue Ranch, after her beloved late cat Mouse (whose death in the documentary highlights Warren’s devotion to four-legged friends) and a parrot named Buttwings. The ranch houses donkeys, horses, goats, pigs, chickens and elderly cats who would otherwise face euthanasia.
“Everything I do, besides music, is for animals,” she says.
Warren balances her animal rescue mission with the joy and pain and frustration and elation that comes with songwriting.
As proof of her daily need to create, she shares a video clip of herself riffing on an acoustic guitar and singing in her hotel room that morning. “I don’t know how do use voice notes,” she says with a shrug, “so I use the visual.”
Warren’s pursuit of the next inescapable melody and soul-piercing lyric remains organic, even as the music industry touts technology and embraces superficial songcraft birthed through artificial intelligence.
It’s a concept that will never square with Warren’s worth ethic.
“I feel like there is nothing like a human being writing a song” she says. “I will never use AI to write a song. It can be a tool for arrangements, but not for writing songs, ever … It worries me, frankly. It worries me for what I do. It worries me for music.”
But as long as as the indefatigable Warren continues to cast her aural spells, the music industry will have a devoted caretaker.
