Following the release of The Hunting Ground, a documentary film about the rampant sexual assaults occurring on college campuses, Diane Warren will be on campus for a very important assignment: an a cappella contest of her Oscar-nominated song, “Til It Happens to You,” penned by herself and Lady Gaga.
The contest is sponsored by the It’s On Us campaign and ROK Mobile, and is entitled Til It Happens to You: Sing for Survivors. The contest is intended to give voice to the issue of sexual assault on American college campuses in a creative and unique way. The contest winners will have the opportunity to be involved in a Skype master class with Warren and David Foster, who was the recipient of a Grammy in the past.
When asked how the project came about, Warren told The Hollywood Reporter, “This contest was Bonnie Abaunza’s idea, which I love. It’s a fantastic idea and the song is so healing, so the fact that it’s going back to colleges in this way is amazing. Here it comes from a movie about what goes on on college campuses, and now the song itself has got a life of its own, giving a voice to it and it will now literally give voices to it.”
The interview then turned to the judges panel, to which Warren answered, “I am good friends with David Foster and I’m working with LL Cool J on his new record, and he seemed like a natural fit. Trudy Green is an amazing manager, who has managed Michael Jackson and now Aerosmith and others and she wanted to be a part of it. Bonnie is a very successful music supervisor and she got me involved in this movie in the first place. It’s a really cool team involved.”
Recently, Linda Perry claimed to have heard an original demo of “Til It Happens to You,” that was too similar to the one that Gaga reportedly had a hand in writing. Perry further accused Warren of attaching Gaga’s name to the song in order to get an Academy Award nomination and that Gaga did not, in fact, help write the lyrics. Warren responded by saying that the song was a “special collaboration” between herself and Gaga, effectively dismissing Perry’s claims.
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