Before my husband became my husband, he wooed me with music. His musical memory is phenomenal. While I enjoyed many of the same tunes, he usually knew a song or two by a band I admired but had never heard before. And so it goes with “I Believe in You and Me.”
Now, most people remember that song as Whitney Houston’s from when she took it up for her film Preacher’s Wife in 1996. However, it was first recorded by The Four Tops in 1982. It is that version that stops me in my tracks. I don’t know if it’s Levi Stubbs’ longingly soulful, honest voice or the first few words of the second stanza (“And I believe in dreams again”) that brings tears to my eyes, but the song does, each and every time.
While music is full of male singers and love ballads, I think “I Believe in You and Me” stands out as one of the greatest love songs because it isn’t the longing of a teenage boy or the fantasizing of a sexy rocker. It’s a soul that has witnessed a lot of loss in life—one that almost gave up on the possibilities that life and love could offer. It’s the soul of a man redeemed by love. And the promise that maybe—just maybe—this time, it’ll all work out.