Someone to Watch Over Me is a 1926 song composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, with Howard Dietz credited for the title. It was written for the Broadway musical Oh, Kay! (1926) and was originally sung on stage by English actress Gertrude Lawrence while holding a rag doll in a sentimental solo. The tune was released as a single in 1927 and became a hit, reaching number 2 on the charts. It began as a fast jazzy number but over the 1930s and 1940s settled into a slow torch song that remains a standard in pop and vocal jazz. The song has been recorded thousands of times—over 1,800 versions—by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Barbra Streisand and many others, and Sinatra included it on his debut album The Voice of Frank Sinatra (1946). It has also appeared in films, notably Mr. Holland's Opus (1995).
