Songfacts®:

• Enrique Iglesias wrote this song with Mark Taylor and Paul Barry, the team that composed his breakout English-language hit "Bailamos." Most of Iglesias' song find him expressing his love and getting some in return, but in "Be With You" he's all alone.
  
  "We tried to write something about him being on the road, and the isolation," Barry said in the Billboard Book Of #1 Hits. "Looking out on the streets below and having the sense you've lost someone that you shouldn't have. You should have fought for them."
• The lyric is sad and lonely, but the music is upbeat, creating some dissonance. The song's co-writer Mark Taylor thought it would be a ballad, but when he produced it with Brain Rawling, they put an uptempo track under it, which worked. "It was always going to be a strange song because of that blend of the dance side of it," Taylor explained. "The vocal was sort of in slow motion on the top. With his vocal, he's got such a sound that it seems to set itself in the track."
• "Be With You" was Iglesias' second #1 hit in America, following "Bailamos." His first three albums were in Spanish, released on the Fonovisa label. Interscope Records signed him and released his first album of mostly English songs, Enrique, in 1999. He was already well known in the Latin community, but he expanded his audience considerably when he started recording in English. He helped inspired the next generation of Latin stars, including Bad Bunny and Pitbull.
• The music video, directed by Dave Meyers, eschews the song meaning and is very upbeat, showing Iglesias and his friends larking about in a convenience store, riding in Jeeps, and going to a dance party. His love interest in the video is Shannon Elizabeth of the American Pie movies.
• Iglesias also released a Spanish version called "Sólo Me Importas Tú."