Will Jennings wrote the lyrics. Jennings is a prolific lyricist who worked with Steve Winwood
on many of his hits and also wrote s
ongs for Rodney Crowell, Barry Manilow, Eric Clapt
on, B.B. King, Roy Orbis
on and many others. In a
Songfacts interview with Jennings, he told us the inspirati
on behind the lyrics to this s
ong: "James Horner, who I had worked with
on other films, asked me to come to his house and c
onsider writing something for
Titanic. James told me the story of the script and then played me the theme he had written for the film. The character Rose, looking back over the all those years, caught
my imaginati
on and I c
onnected her with a 100-plus-year-old woman, still working, still vital, Beatrice Wood, who I had met a few years before in Ojai, California, an hour or so north of where I lived in Westlake Village. Wood had been an artist in New York before World War I and had lived and worked in France, and wound up in California and finally in Ojai, working as a fine arts potter.
My wife and I happened to be in Ojai when the premiere of a film called
Mama of Dada, a documentary about Wood's life, was shown and we went to see it and Ms. Wood herself showed up, very much alive and lively, 101-plus, and talked about the film before it was shown and then received all of the people at the premiere at a hotel across the street from the theatre where the film was shown. When she shook
my hand I had such a feeling of vitality and life force - it was like nothing in
my life before or since.
When James told me the script, I focused
on Rose and thought of Beatrice Wood, who was old enough to have been Rose, and I still had the feeling I had of the life force I felt when I touched Beatrice Wood's hand, and it was from this feeling that I wrote the lyric for '
My Heart Will Go On.' When James and I were working
on the film, the rumor was that Jim Camer
on had
gone crazy in Mexico spending too much m
oney and the film would be a big flop. The rumor was wr
ong. The film was a huge hit. The s
ong was a huge hit. I am still getting over it. Totally unexpected."