 Initially, "Someone to Watch Over Me" was written by George Gershwin as a "fast and jazzy" up-tempo swing tune – marked "scherzando" (playful) in the sheet music – but in the 1930s and 1940s it was covered by singers in a slower ballad form, which became the standard.The definitive slow torch song version was first released by Lee Wiley in 1939, followed by Margaret Whiting in 1944.More than 1,800 recordings of the song have been published, almost all of them performed in the slow ballad style.