Songfacts®:

• One of the softest of soft rock songs, "Feelings" finds Morris Albert trying desperately to forget the feelings of love his girl took with her when she left. Memories may fade over time, but feelings are harder to shake.
• The mid-'70s were high time for sensitive singer-songwriter ballads, which explains why this rather mawkish track was so successful. The refrain of "whoa whoa whoa feelings" was hard to shake; the only defense seemed to be singing right along with it (frequently off-key), but that only seemed to give it strength. The song peaked at #6 on the Hot 100, but was on the chart for a staggering 32 weeks - longer than any other hit in 1975. You just couldn't shake it.
  
  When it finally passed, "Feelings" became the archetype of the super-sappy, over-sensitive heartache ballad, played more for irony than for musical worth. Countless movies, commercials and TV shows used it for comic effect. A good example is the Family Matters episode "Cousin Urkel" where Steve Urkel does a hapless version of the song.
• The singer's full name is Morris Albert Kaiserman. He was born in Brazil and came to America to study phonology at Columbia University. His only other chart appearance was "Sweet Loving Man," which reached #93 US in 1976.
• Albert originally recorded this as a Portuguese-language bolero, which became a major hit in Latin America in 1975.
• In 1987, Morris Albert was found guilty of plagiarism, with a jury finding that this borrowed heavily from a French song from 1956 called "Pour Toi" ("For You") by Loulou Gasté. As a result of the lawsuit, Gasté's name was added to the composer credit, which previously went solely to Albert. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France
• Walter Jackson took this song to #93 US in 1977. Other popular covers include versions by Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, Teresa Carpio, Shirley Bassey, Lynn Anderson, Jim Nabors, Brenda Lee, Gloria Gaynor and The Offspring.
• The word "feelings" is repeated 23 times in this song.
• This song made headlines in 1999 when an Indonesian army leader sang it at a formal dinner to describe his position on the unrest in East Timor (A former Portuguese colony that was annexed by Indonesia in 1976. After a quarter century of unrest, East Timor became independent in 2002).
• If you'd like to hear a punk rock version of "Feelings," check out the 1998 cover by The Offspring. Their lead singer, Dexter Holland, explained to MTV: "In the '70s, it was perfect to make it about love, and all happy and ex-hippie and all that stuff. Now, it seems appropriate to make it fast and aggressive and angry, and talk about feelings of hate and stuff. I just don't know if kids will know the song and get the joke."