This Heartbreaking Love Song Charted The Longest In 1974

By numbers alone, Barbra Streisand is one of the most successful artists of all time. Over 90 million records sold across six decades, eight Grammys out of a stunning 48 nominations, an EGOT winner by 27 years old (winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), star of numerous films, and singer of five No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 songs: Streisand's done it all. Her success earned her millions of dollars, enough to unexpectedly clone her dog, Sammie. Arguably at the height of her powers in the 1970s, 1973 saw Streisand grace the big screen in a film that bore a 1974-released song of the same name, "The Way We Were." The song became Streisand's first No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit. It landed on the chart in November of 1973 and climbed up to No. 1, where it stayed for three weeks starting on February 2. The song spent a total of 23 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.

As a song, you couldn't get a more gentle, easy-listening ballad than "The Way We Were." It's a low-tempo, piano-and-stringed-filled, orchestrally-backed track that highlights Streisand's voice, has an unintrusive, subtly pulsing bassline, some clean electric guitar work, and so forth. It and its core melodic line captured the ears and hearts of the music-listening public in the mid-70s in a decade of momentus classic rock when Pink Floyd, Meat Loaf, and Eagles put out the highest-selling records.

But, 1974's "The Way We Were" wasn't such a huge hit solely because of its music. Its movie, released the year prior in 1973, was also a hit. It earned six Academy Award nominations and two wins, including the Oscar for Best Song for Streisand's "The Way We Were," which was written by Marvin Hamlisch, Alan Bergman, and Marilyn Bergman. And while you can appreciate the song on its own, it took on a whole additional dimension in light of its film.

"The Way We Were" wasn't a mere soundtrack song; it was written to encapsulate its 1973 movie in its entirety. As Beacon Senior News quotes songwriter Marvin Hamlisch, "I wanted to convey all the sorrow, despondency, and pain of their [the movie's characters] relationship, capturing its star-crossed nature." 

The star-crossed relationship in question was composed of the late Robert Redford (Hubbel Gardiner) and Barbra Streisand (Katie Morosky), playing individuals drawn towards each other despite an increasingly wide gap in political views during the height of 1950's McCarthyism. Ultimately, the two's love isn't enough to overcome their differences, but as the song's lyrics say, "So it's the laughter / We will remember / Whenever we remember /The way we were." Yes, it's beautifully written. And yes, it's a fairly realistic, simply told, heartbreaking portrayal of how love can't escape the influence of its age, for better or for worse.

But even though "The Way We Were" is a very emotional song, Hamlisch didn't want to go overboard with its sentimentality. He was "determined not to write something drippingly sentimental," per Beacon Senior News, but also built the song specifically around Streisand's vocal strengths to "let her soar!" 

Hamlisch must have hit the right balance between authenticity and schmaltz, because the general public loved the song. During the initial movie screening of "The Way We Were," Hamlisch recalls hearing no reaction at all from the audience until they added Streisand's music. Then, folks started crying one by one during a particularly heartbreaking scene. When Streisand released the standalone song, it knocked Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr out of the No. 1 position.