Songfacts®:

• This was written by the songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and was the centerpiece of Dolly Parton's now famous late '70s crossover from Country music to Pop. In addition to topping the Country singles chart, it was also Parton's first Top 10 Pop hit, reaching #3 on the Pop singles charts in January 1978.
• Mann and Weil wrote this somewhere around 1975, and initially offered it to Brenda Lee. Lee sat on the song for over a year, before ultimately deciding not to record it. B.J. Thomas was the first to record the song when he included it on his self-titled album in 1977, and it reached the ears of Parton's producer Gary Klein.
• This was the title song of Parton's 1977 Here You Come Again album which, like the single, hit both the Country and Pop albums charts. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Mark - Boston, MA, for above 3
• Cynthia Weil accidentally erased the original opening line on the tape recorder while Barry was out, which proved to be a fortuitous mistake. She explained: "I didn't know what to do, so I made one up. I made up the melody and the lyric. When he came back I sang it to him. He said 'that's not my opening line, but I like yours better.' We kept it."
• Parton hoped the song would broaden her fanbase, but she wasn't willing to sacrifice her country roots. She begged producer Gary Klein to countrify the pop tune with the addition of steel guitar, so he brought in noted steel guitarist Al Perkins for the job. "She wanted people to be able to hear the steel guitar, so if someone said it isn't country, she could say it and prove it," Klein told Tom Roland in The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits. "She was so relieved. It was like her life sentence was reprieved."
• This earned Parton a Grammy win for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female.
• Parton's version was used on The Office in the 2008 episode "Weight Loss." It was also used on Supergirl in the 2016 episode "Welcome To Earth," and on the "Winter" segment of the mini-series Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life.
• Kacey Musgraves and Katy Perry joined Parton to perform this song when Parton was honored at the 2019 Grammys with the MusiCares Person Of The Year award.