Kelly Lang first fell in love with the movie. Then she fell in love with the song. And then, she read the lyrics…and realized that she had to make them her own.

“'Take My Breath Away’ is just so brilliantly written,” Lang tells Taste of Country about her cover of Berlin's 1986 hit song from the iconic movie Top Gun. “It's so deep, you don't even know where you are when you listen to it.”

It was the new movie Top Gun: Maverick that reminded Lang of the song, which originally appeared on the Top Gun soundtrack, but will now find a home on her new album, Old Soul II.

“I remember the first time I heard (‘Take My Breath Away'),” Lang recalls. “I think it's healthy to go back and revisit a time when you were falling in love." She pauses, adding, "I can't imagine this album without this song, you know?”

Ironically, Lang’s cover of “Take My Breath Away” ended up being the very last track she added to the new album.

“I'm known as a singer songwriter, but my fun and really passionate times are when I get to go back and relive fun and happy and meaningful times in my life through music,” says Lang.

Lang has found true love herself since marrying her husband, country music legend TG Sheppard, in 2007. Her cover of "Take My Breath Away" is a tribute to that kind of love.

“The way the melody goes and the way the lyrics blend together, it's just love making in a song,” she says with a chuckle. “It's just erotically beautiful.”

She pauses.

“Can I say that out loud?” she asks rhetorically, laughing.

Lang says her cover of “Take My Breath Away” might even reach a new generation of listeners who have never been touched by its beauty.

“Maybe they will hear my version and it will pique their interest to go hear the original,” concludes Lang, who still is in the process of mourning the recent death of her dear friend, Olivia Newton-John. “I do try to put my own character within these covers. I want it to be similar enough that you're not going to miss anything of the original, but I want it to be organically my own at the same time.”

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Michael Jenkins
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