Songfacts®:

• This was the theme song to the 1989 movie Chances Are, starring Cybill Shepherd, Robert Downey Jr. and Ryan O'Neal. The song was written by Dean Pitchford (lyrics) and Tom Snow (music), who couldn't use the title "Chances Are" because it is the name of a famous Johnny Mathis song. In our interview with Dean Pitchford, he explained: "The movie was about a woman who falls in love with a man only to lose him. He gets killed, and then his soul migrates into another body and comes back in a younger man. And that soul is trying to reunite with her, but inevitably she ends up with a man who has been staying by her side all her life, and has been there for her. And that's the soul match that was to have been made. So when she walks down the aisle at the end of the movie with Ryan O'Neal, it's the end of a long journey. So I wrote 'After all the stops and starts, we keep coming back to these two hearts. Two angels who've been rescued from the fall.' I thought that that was really the summation of the movie, because you get some scenes in Heaven, where the soul gets misassigned. And I always liked the idea of angels being rescued from the fall, and I also liked that 'fall' rhymed with 'all.' So I brought Tom the 'After All' concept of 'we keep coming back to these two hearts,' and that was the taking off point."
• Dean Pitchford had lots of success with movie soundtracks - he wrote the screenplay and all the songs for Footloose, including "Almost Paradise," another duet that like "After All" was a #1 Adult Contemporary hit. Some of the other songs Pitchford wrote with Tom Snow include "You Should Hear How She Talks About You" and "Let's Hear It For The Boy."
• In addition to the Chances Are soundtrack, this was released on Cher's album Heart of Stone and on Peter Cetera's album Connection. It was Cher's first #1 Adult Contemporary hit.
• In addition to writing this this song for Chances Are, Tom Snow also worked on the film's score, using variations on the main theme of this song in places.