1973 Oscar-Winning Song, Written in One Night, Was a No. 1 Hit 53 Years Ago Today

Some songs take months or even years to finish. Others arrive almost overnight.

Released as a single in 1973, Maureen McGovern’s “The Morning After” became one of the year’s biggest hits, spending two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and eventually earning Gold certification. But the song’s journey began under an incredibly tight deadline. It was written in a single night for the 1972 disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, and 53 years ago today it climbed to the top of the charts.

Songwriters Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn were approached in March 1972 by producer Irwin Allen, who asked them to write the love theme for The Poseidon Adventure. According to Fred Bronson’s “The Billboard Book of No. 1 Hits,” Allen gave them just one day to complete the assignment.

“The production schedule called for the song to be recorded the following Monday, and Allen wanted to hear the completed tune on Friday,” Bronson writes. Kasha and Hirschhorn spent the night at Kasha’s home working at the piano over “some strong, black coffee.”

“We stumbled in the next morning,” Hirschhorn recalled. “They said, ‘It’s perfect!'”

Originally, the song carried a much darker title: “Why Must There Be a Morning After?” Allen and director Ronald Neame felt audiences needed a more hopeful message for the disaster film, so it was shortened to simply “The Morning After.” Even The Poseidon Adventure itself nearly received a different title before the studio decided to stick with Paul Gallico’s original name.

Although actress Carol Lynley appeared to sing the song in The Poseidon Adventure, the vocals heard in the film actually belonged to session singer Renee Armand. When it came time to release the song as a commercial single, record executive Russ Regan searched for a new voice and discovered an unknown Ohio singer named Maureen McGovern after hearing one of her demo tapes.

According to Bronson, Kasha and Hirschhorn initially played McGovern’s recording and “were very shaken by it.”

“He had never heard of this girl in his life,” Kasha said. “He asked us what we thought of it and we told him we loved it. We weren’t just being Monday morning quarterbacks. We thought she captured the song so beautifully.”

The record got off to a relatively slow start, but everything changed after “The Morning After” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

“It started off slowly, debuting at number 99 on the Hot 100 dated June 23, 1973,” Bronson writes. “Its chart progress sharply increased in its third week on the chart; it moved 99-86-42-29-20-9 to number one.”

The song spent two weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and finished as Billboard’s No. 28 song of 1973. It also earned a Gold certification after selling more than one million copies, while helping launch McGovern’s career, which later included another Oscar-winning disaster movie theme, “We May Never Love Like This Again” from The Towering Inferno, and the hit “Different Worlds” from the TV series Angie.

Looking back, Kasha believed the song resonated because its message reached far beyond the film.

“It struck a chord of hope,” he said. “It can be read as a personalized kind of song. It could be read as a love song. It could be read as a song for a person who’s on alcohol or some kind of drug, there’s got to be a morning after, meaning getting through the night… It’s just a great song of hope.”

Related: 1973 Song With Zero Chart History, Written by a 24-Year-Old, Is Still a Heartbreaking Ballad 53 Years Later