Movies and TV series have a way of bringing new life into songs that weren’t necessarily chart hits when they were first released. A 1981 song written by Billy Vera is notoriously known for having a second run on the charts years later, thanks to its inclusion in a popular NBCsitcom.
Anyone who listens to “At This Moment” would assume it was a major hit when it was released in January of 1971. The track was recorded by Vera and his band, Billy Vera & the Beaters, during a series of performances in West Hollywood. It was then released as part of the live album Billy and the Beaters. According to American Songwriter, the song was inspired by a girl Vera met in the late ’70s and was unfinished for a year.
“I was 33 and she was a 20-year-old college girl. We started seeing each other and she described breaking up with her previous boyfriend in vivid detail, about how it crushed him and how he went off the deep end. So I started writing the song from what I perceived was his point of view. But I couldn’t finish it,” he explained in the book, Playing Back the ‘80s: A Decade of Unstoppable Hits.
Vera goes on to say that if he can’t finish a track in a few hours, he’d usually toss it. Instead, the track was shoved inside his mother’s piano bench. A year after dating the same girl, she broke up with him and, “I was crushed beyond belief. To this day, I’ve never been as broken-hearted as I was. And that’s when I knew how the song ended and I finished it.”
The track had the emotional backbone and sound to make it a hit ballad, but it received little promotion from the record label. As a result, it went unnoticed until 1986, when it was used inFamily Tiesand became a fan staple.
Family Ties Revived “At This Moment” for Billy Vera
One day, Michael Weithorn, a key member of the sitcom’s creative team, called Vera to ask permission to use “At This Moment” for one of its episodes. Weithorn had once seen Vera and his band perform the track and knew it was perfect for a key episode when Michael J. Fox‘s character dances with his love interest Ellen (Tracy Pollan), who would later be the actor’s future wife.
Vera, by then, was making his career as an actor, but immediately went to cut a new version of the song for the sitcom. Having written TV tracks before, Vera thought nothing of it until receiving piles of fan mail, loving the song.
The song was once again used during its fifth season, and “At This Moment” hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts at No. 1. It also landed on the Billboard R&B Chart and the Billboard Hot Country Chart, with further radio play landing it on the Billboard Hot Country Chart.
Related: 1972 Soul Ballad, Originally Dismissed as a Hit Track, Became a No.1 Heartbreak Anthem