Songfacts®:

• This song is about a woman 38 Special singer/guitarist Don Barnes was dating. He was based in Jacksonville, Florida, and she was in Texas.
  
  "It was a long-distance romance, and we were both absolutely crazy about each other," Barnes told Songfacts. "But you don't want to get mixed up with a traveling musician. She called me and said that she wanted my blessing because she was going to get married. That was one of those things where it's like, 'Oh, wow, I can't believe that you're doing this.'
  
  You know, what if I'd have put you in my place? What if I'd have said that to you? So it's a different turnaround, and I wrote the song like, 'What if I'd been the one to say goodbye? Could you smile when you want to cry?' That kind of thing. So it was a different perspective."
• "If I'd Been the One" was the first single from the 1983 38 Special album Tour de Force. The previous year, they had a hit with "Caught Up In You," so they were in good standing with radio program directors. "If I'd Been the One" went to #19 and earned a lasting spot in the band's setlists. By the end of the decade they had 14 entries on the Hot 100.
• We had the good fortune to have 15 or 16 Top 40, Top 20, Top 10 songs. Every one of those songs was a marker in our lives. They came from real truthful elements.
  
  But when we start "If I'd Been The One" - "What if I'd been the one to say goodbye?" - people have forgotten that one because it was not as big a hit. It made it to #19, but it wasn't as big a hit.
  
  This is one of the 38 Special songs that always gets a great reaction when they play it live. "As soon as we start that, every person is like, 'Oh man, I remember that,'" Don Barnes told Songfacts. "It takes them all back. That's the magic in music."
• Barnes wrote the song with band members Jeff Carlisi and Donnie Van Zant, along with their stage manager, Larry Steele, who often contributed to their songwriting. Barnes sang lead on the track; he and Van Zant were co-lead vocalists in the group.
• 38 Special harnessed the power of MTV in the early '80s when the network was struggling to find quality videos from American rock bands. They made a high-end video for "If I'd Been The One" with horses and fire. It stars Julianne Phillips in what IMDB tells us is her first acting role. Two years later, in 1985, she married Bruce Springsteen and appeared in his "Glory Days" video. They got divorced in 1989.