Dean Pitchford

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Dean Pitchford is an Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning American lyricist and composer of pop music, especially for film and television. He started out as an actor and was in the touring casts of musicals like Pippin (Broadway musical and starred Off Broadway in a few productions. With Peter Allen he wrote material for Allen's one man Broadway show Up in One- More Than a Concert among others. His best-known works include the theme song to Fame — for which he shared the 1981 Oscar and Golden Globe awards for "Best Original Song" with composer Michael Gore — and most of the songs for Footloose, two of which were nominated for the Academy Awards of 1985. For his part in the scores of these two films, he shared their two Grammy Award nominations for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special.^[1]

In 1984 Along with Tom Snow, Pitchford wrote the song Let's Hear It For the Boy sung by American singer Deniece Williams for the movie Footloose soundtrack. It climbed to number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1984 and peaked at number two on the UK singles chart. It was certified Platinum by the RIAA and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song.

Pitchford also has won the ASCAP and BMI awards for "Most Performed Song from a Motion Picture" in 1990: the ASCAP for the song "Birthday Suit" from the 1989 film Sing, shared with Rhett Lawrence, and the BMI for the song "After All," from the movie Chances Are, shared with Tom Snow.^[1]