Songfacts®:

• Written by prolific hitmaker Diane Warren ("I Don't Want To Miss A Thing," "Because You Loved Me"), this pop-rock ballad finds Bolton optimistic in the face of hardship and looking forward to leaving his sorrow behind when he's back on his feet again. Warren wrote the song while dealing with the grief over her father's death. "The song wrote itself," she said. "I was thinking about my dad who had recently passed away, and it just came pouring out."
• Warren can enjoy a certain anonymity as a popular songwriter as most fans of her work don't know what she looks like, and often attribute her songs to the stars who give voice to her lyrics. But she also has fans within the music industry who let her know how songs like this one affect them.
  
  "Some artists will send me letters they get, and [in the letters] they'll be talking about how a song saved their live or something, or touched them when they were going through a rough time," she explained to American Songwriter. "I remember a song I wrote for Michael Bolton, 'When I'm Back on My Feet Again,' someone literally said it saved their life. They were suicidal, and when they heard the song, it gave them strength. What more can you ask for than to have a song do something like that. It's pretty cool. It really feels good because I sit alone in a room. I don't know the effect my songs have, but they really touch people, if they come from the heart. They really can do a lot of good for people."
• "When I'm Back On My Feet Again" spent three weeks at #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and gave Bolton another hit from his Soul Provider album, following the title track and "How Can We Be Lovers?" Ten years earlier, still using his birth name Michael Bolotin, he was trying to make it with his band Blackjack, a hard-rock outfit. That went bust, and he went through some rough times before having some luck as a solo artist in 1987 with his album The Hunger; his cover of "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay" proved there was a market for his brand of soul.