My Song Report

When You Believe by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston

It's sort of a message song. It's what 'Prince of Egypt' is about, Moses. If we were ever going to come together on any kind of record, this is definitely the right one, and really the coolest thing to me is that after all of the drama and everybody making it like we had a rivalry, she was just really cool and we had a really good time in the studio. We had fun. And so, if nothing else, it was a good experience... and diva-ism, whatever."

—Carey, on working with Houston in the studio, during an interview withVibe.

When Carey compiled her first compilation effort #1's, "When You Believe" was included in the track listing. According to Carey, the song was included because she felt it was "a miracle" that she and Houston collaborated on a record. During the development ofAll That Glitters (a film Carey was working on at the time, later known as Glitter), she had been introduced to DreamWorks co-ownerJeffrey Katzenberg, who asked her if she would record the song "When You Believe" for the soundtrack of the animated film The Prince of Egypt. Houston, on the other hand, was introduced to the project thoughKenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, with whom she had been collaborating on her album at the time, My Love Is Your Love. After they were shown the film separately, both became very enthusiastic about participating in the project.

The song was co-written by Stephen Schwartz and Babyface, who also produced the song. Carey had previously collaborated with Babyface on her albums, Music Box (1993) and Daydream (1995), and Houston had previously collaborated with him on her album I'm Your Baby Tonight (1990), as well as her song "Queen of the Night" from The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album (1992), her tracks on the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack (1995) and two tracks from The Preacher's Wife soundtrack (1996), "You Were Loved" and "My Heart Is Calling". Babyface expressed how he went through more than one version of the song and described its production as a beautiful movie ballad, something different from anything he, Carey or Houston had ever previously recorded. In an interview with Vibe, Carey said that she "liked [the song] the way it was". She had characterised it as "a very big ballad but in an inspirational way" and denied speculation that there had been past rivalry or animosity between her and Houston prior to its recording: "I never even really talked to her until this. We never had any issues between us. The media and everybody made it an issue." In an interview with Ebony, Houston spoke about her relationship with Carey:

"I enjoyed working with her very much. Mariah and I got along very great. We had never talked and never sang together before. We just had a chance for camaraderie, singer-to-singer, artist-to-artist, that kind of thing. We just laughed and talked and laughed and talked and sang in between that ... It's good to know that two ladies of soul can still be friends. We talked about doing other things together, enterprise-wise, which is cool, because she's got a good, vivid mind, that girl. She's a smart lady. I really like Mariah."

While the pair continued to express their positive feelings for one another, tabloids began writing the opposite. There were claims that the two bore ill will against each other, and that they had to record the song separately due to constant tension. While media speculation grew as the film's release date drew near, both singers maintained that they had become close friends, and had only the most positive things to say about each other. Originally, Schwartz composed the film version of "When You Believe", which was sung in the film by the characters of Tzipporah (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Miriam (Sally Dworsky). It featured some different instrumentation from the original, and used a children's choir as well as some lines in Hebrew. However, in order to give the song a wider radio and pop appeal, Edmonds changed some of the song's instrumentals and replaced the children's choir with a gospel one. His version was considered more "commercial" and would make the song "help sell the movie". Schwartz's original version was titled "When You Believe", while Edmonds' enhanced version was titled "The Prince of Egypt (When You Believe)".

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_You_Believe

You should try to hear it!!