Songfacts®:

• This elegant love song is a tale of unrequited love that comes together in the end. The message of the song is that life is full of unexpected events that often lead to what's ultimately for the best. For Vanessa Williams, the song had special meaning as she recovered from a scandal where she was stripped of her Miss America crown when nude pictures of her surfaced. Williams became a very successful singer and actress, overshadowing the scandal with her talents.
• This was written by the songwriting team of Jon Lind, Wendy Waldman and Phil Galdston. According to an interview with the writers in Songwriter Universe magazine, Lind and Galdston wrote the song with bitter and ironic lyrics, which Waldman changed to make it an uplifting song. The song was not intended for Williams, and the artists they shopped it to turned it down, but when Vanessa Williams heard the demo, she told her record company that it was the song she'd been waiting for her whole life - the song was her whole story.
  
  "They gave it to Bette Midler, who passed," Williams revealed on Jesse Tyler Ferguson's Dinner's on Me podcast. "They gave it to Streisand, and she passed. And I was, like, third one up."
• This topped the Hot 100 for five weeks and was named by the ASCAP as its Song of the Year for 1992, meaning it was performed more than any other song in that year.
• Other countries where this topped the charts include Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.