Songfacts®:

• An early collaboration between pop songwriters Cynthia Weil and Tom Snow, this ballad finds Barry Manilow yearning to rekindle a romance with an ex-lover. Snow came up with the melody first and gave it to Weil, who wrote the lyrics.
  
  "I remember the melody one afternoon just all of the sudden coming out of me," Snow told The Paul Leslie Hour in 2018. "I had to let it happen and hold on for the ride. It was a pretty intense experience. I was just singing nonsense syllables for lyrics, but I think on the chorus, I mumbled something like, 'somewhere down the line,' and Cynthia always liked to get melodies from me with whatever sort of subliminal, subconscious words left in."
  
  A few weeks later, Weil sent him the lyrics with a warning that the title might sound a bit prosaic at first, but Snow loved it.
• Weil and Snow previously worked together on The Pointer Sisters' hit "He's So Shy." At the time, Weil was already well-known for writing hits with her husband, Barry Mann, while Snow was landing cuts for Olivia Newton-John, Cher, and Bonnie Raitt. In 1981, the same year Manilow released "Somewhere Down The Road," Bill Medley issued "Don't Know Much," a Weil/Mann/Snow collaboration that became a big hit for Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville in 1989.
• Snow figured Arista president Clive Davis, who chose the song for Manilow, had some influence over the way it turned out. The songwriter was taken aback when he first heard the bombastic production, which also featured some lyrical changes. "It got a little over-the-top there," he admitted. "It was a bit of a shock, but we were thrilled that he recorded it."
  
  He prefers Manilow's live version, which is an intimate, solo performance with just the singer and the piano. "He understood the fragile beauty of the song," he said.
• This was Manilow's 12th #1 hit on the Adult Contemporary chart, where it held the position for two weeks in 1982. He only reached the apex one more time with 1983's "Read 'Em And Weep."
• The song was revived in 2001 on Ally McBeal in the episode "Reach Out And Touch," which finds the title character having hallucinations of the singer. Manilow guest-starred in the episode and sang the tune with the show's resident lounge performer, Vonda Shepard.