Songfacts®:

• "I Believe in You" features some of the most remarkably passionate singing of Bob Dylan's career, but that fact is largely overlooked because the song also features some of his most overtly Christian lyrics.
  
  The song is about a person pushing through all obstacles to maintain their faith in Jesus Christ. Speaking about his Christian conversion, Dylan told Robert Hillburn of the Los Angeles Times, "I did begin telling a few people after a couple of months and a lot of them got angry at me."
  
  Dylan takes that experience and amplifies it in this song, summoning the sort of emotion you could imagine from a 4th-century martyr during the Great Persecution. It's truly moving stuff, and you don't need to be a Christian to feel it.
• Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits played guitar on this one.
• Dylan debuted this song when he was the musical guest on the October 20, 1979 episode of Saturday Night Live, the only time he appeared on the show. The first time he played it during a full concert was on November 1, 1979, in San Francisco. Since then, he's played it live more than 250 times.
• The song was recorded on May 3, 1979, at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama.
• Sinéad O'Connor was set to perform this song at a Bob Dylan tribute concert held October 16, 1992 at Madison Square Garden, but it didn't go as planned. O'Connor had worked up a soft, whispered arrangement of the song, but as soon as Kris Kristofferson introduced her, the crowd erupted into a ruckus.
  
  O'Connor had torn up a photo of Pope John Paul II two weeks earlier on Saturday Night Live, which many in the audience used as justification for booing and catcalling her. Others in the crowd tried to cheer her on, resulting in a din that made it impossible for her to sing the song as planned. After Kristofferson returned to the stage and told her, "Don't let the bastards get you down," she launched into a loud a cappella version of Bob Marley's "War," the same song she sang on SNL before tearing up the photo of the Pope.