Songfacts®:

• LeAnn Rimes passionately expresses her devotion to God on this Christian country-pop ballad she recorded for the 1999 TV miniseries Jesus. Peaking at #11, it was her biggest hit on the Hot 100 since "How Do I Live" went to #2 in 1997. It also reached #8 on the Country chart and #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
• This was written by Dennis Matkosky and Ty Lacy, the songwriters behind Keith Urban's hit "You'll Think Of Me." Matkosky, who also co-wrote the Flashdance hit "Maniac," went on to write Rimes' Top 40 country single "Some People" from her 2005 album, This Woman.
• Matkosky admitted to the Songcraft podcast that it took a bit of deception to get this song pushed through. He was playing the tune in his studio when his wife told him it sounded like it could be a hit for Faith Hill. Unfortunately, Hill's people turned it down, so he went to Curb Records in the hopes someone on the label's roster would record it. The fortuitous lie was formed in the waiting room.
  
  "I was reading a Variety magazine and I noticed that Kevin Costner was doing a movie called For Love Of The Game," he recalled. "So when I went in to the A&R person, I said, 'Hey, I wanna play you a song, and I'm working on this movie For Love Of The Game with Kevin Costner, and I need to find a singer right away, within 24 hours." Shortly after, he was contacted by the label's founder, Mike Curb, who offered LeAnn Rimes for the job, but it had tie into the Jesus miniseries rather than the Costner movie. Obviously, Matksosky was willing to "sacrifice" the latter gig.
• I Need You is also the name of Rimes' third compilation album, released in 2001. The singer was in the midst of suing Curb Records to be released from her contract (which was signed on her behalf by her parents when she was 12 years old), when the label issued I Need You. Rimes promptly denounced the release. "This album was made without my creative input," she explained. "It consists largely of unfinished material and songs that didn't make other albums... I want to make abundantly clear to you that this album is not a reflection of myself as an artist but is solely the conception of Curb Records, and for that I am truly and deeply sorry."
  
  Because of Rimes' statement, the album was discontinued mere days after its release, but the singer re-released it in March 2002 with additional songs.
• Rimes sang this with Katharine McPhee during an appearance on the Netflix comedy series Country Comfort, which stars Rimes' husband Eddie Cibrian as a widowed single father. In the 2021 episode, we learn that his late wife's favorite song was "I Need You."