Diane Keaton is known mostly for her work on the big screen, but songwriter Carole Bayer Sager had the chance to foster another one of the late actress’ talents: singing.
In an interview with People on Monday, October 13, Sager, 81, opened up about her time collaborating with Keaton — who died at age 79 on Saturday, October 11 — on her first and only solo single, “First Christmas.” The song was cowritten with Jonas Myrin and released in November 2024.
“I was just playing the song for my husband [Robert A. Daly, Board of Directors Chair at the American Film Institute]. We were listening to her sing this song [that] Jonas and I wrote, and she loved it so much,” Sager said of the Christmas tune.
Sager recalled of Keaton, “She so loved recording this song and working with me and Jonas … she’d never stopped asking, ‘Are we gonna work on the song? Am I gonna sing?’ … She just was almost childlike about it. She was wonderful, she was wonderful. She was a magic light, you know, just for everyone.”
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The Grammy-winning lyricist told the outlet that she is considering re-releasing the song in honor of Keaton.
“She sings about Christmas without you here, except when I listen to it now, she could be singing about herself, you know, which makes me very teary,” Sager continued. “She had a great life, and she touched so many people with her gift of acting and writing and even singing.”
Sager revealed that “First Christmas” came to be after Keaton told her that she “loved to sing” but didn’t consider herself much of “a singer.”
“I said, ‘Well, maybe I can write you a Christmas song.’ So Jonas and I wrote this song. And then she came over and not only fell in love with it, she started crying as it moved her, and she said, ‘Oh, I love this, this is so beautiful,'” Sager recalled. “So I said, ‘Well, why don’t you try and sing it?’ And she was so authentic when she sang it … she was sort of acting it, you know, because she is a great actress and, and then she’d start to cry when she was singing it.”
Sager gushed that Keaton “did such a beautiful job” on the song despite often being “insecure” about her singing during the recording process.
“She always wanted to do it one more time and she could make it better … she was really obsessed with the song. She talked about it all the time,” Sager added.
Sager told the outlet that it was “very shocking” to hear of Keaton’s death, which was confirmed by a spokesperson for the Father of the Bride actress on Saturday.
“There are no further details available at this time, and her family has asked for privacy in this moment of great sadness,” the spokesperson told People.
Jonas Myrin/Instagram
Sager said of Keaton, “She just was a great light on this earth and loved life.”
Meanwhile, Myrin, 42, took to Instagram to share several videos of Keaton in the studio, along with a tribute to his late collaborator.
“I’m heartbroken by @diane_keaton passing. To have been trusted to help bring her lifelong dream of recording an original song to life is something I’ll carry with me forever. ‘First Christmas’, which I co-wrote with @carolebayersager and produced for Diane last year, became her first and final song, and now those words hold a meaning I could never have imagined,” he wrote.
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Myrin continued, “Beyond the song itself, it’s the memories from our time together that I hold closest. Diane always filled the room with laughter and little jokes that kept us smiling, and always arrived so stylishly, as if ready for a Vogue shoot at any moment. I will never forget when she called me in tears, saying that getting to sing this song was one of the greatest gifts of her career. It was a dream she had carried her whole life, to sing and record an original song, and being able to help her bring that dream to life with Carole was incredibly special.”
Myrin called Keaton “fearless, curious, generous, and full of love in everything she did.”
“Her voice, her heart, and her art will live on in those notes and in the legacy she leaves behind,” he concluded. “And Diane will live on, forever in mine. 🤍.”
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