Songfacts®:

• This soaring ballad was a huge hit for Celine Dion, taking her to a new level of international stardom. In the song, she lists the blessings that have come into her life thanks to a very important person in her life, stamping it with the line, "I'm everything I am because you loved me."
  
  Dion doesn't write her own songs, but we can ascertain that she related this one to René Angélil, her husband from 1994 until his death in 2016.
• "Because You Loved Me" was written by Diane Warren and produced by David Foster for the 1996 movie Up Close & Personal, starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer (yes, it's a love story).
  
  Warren and Foster were two of the most reliable hitmakers of the era, particularly adept at ballads. Warren's hits from the '80s include ""I Get Weak" by Belinda Carlisle and "Love Will Lead You Back" by Taylor Dayne. Foster produced the hits for the band Chicago that kept them on the charts in the '80s, songs like "You're the Inspiration" and "Hard to Say I'm Sorry." They kept it up in the '90s, with Warren writing "I'll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me" by Exposé and "Un-Break My Heart" by Toni Braxton, and Foster producing Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You."
• Diane Warren explained in the book Chicken Soup For the Soul: The Story Behind The Song how she honors her father in this song. Said Warren: "I saw the film [Up Close & Personal] with the director, Jon Avnet, on a Friday. I thought, 'What would I want to hear at the end of the movie?' Jon played me a tape of a gospel singer to give me a sense of what he was looking for – something really soulful.
  
  I went into my office on Saturday, the following day, and the chorus came quickly. Michelle Pfeiffer's character is thanking Robert Redford's character for believing in her. The song became personal at the same time that it was telling the story of the film. Once I began, it became a way of thanking my dad for everything he did for me and the support he has always given me. He believed in me and my music from the time I was a little girl. When I was 15, he took me around to music publishers. Not only did he support my goals, he supported me financially while I was struggling in the beginning.
  
  I had to wait for months to see if my song would be chosen to use in the film or if they would select one of the other four submissions. Thank goodness I had just started therapy! It got me through it."
• "Because You Loved Me" was released as a single in February 1996, a few weeks before the movie Up Close & Personal hit theaters. In America, it went to #1 in March and stayed for six weeks. It also topped the charts in Australia (3 weeks) and Canada (1 week). The single also set a then-record on the US Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart, where it remained at #1 for 19 weeks. The song was included on Celine Dion's album Falling Into You, which sold over 12 million copies in America and many more worldwide. The next single from the album was "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," followed by a cover of Eric Carmen's "All By Myself." The following year, Dion released "My Heart Will Go On" from the blockbuster movie Titanic.
• The track has been covered by various artists, including Johnny Mathis (1998), Michael Ball (1998), Jane McDonald (2001) and Clay Aiken (2006). Said Warren: "There have been so many versions from gospel to dance, Spanish versions and recordings all over the world. I am super proud of that song."
• This is a very popular wedding song. One high-profile couple that used it as their first dance is Vince Gill and Amy Grant, who married in Nashville in 2000.
• Diane Warren was very pleased with "Because You Loved Me."
  
  "I feel like it was a leap in my craft," Warren told Billboard in a podcast. "I felt that when I wrote that song, it was better than I was at the time, if that makes sense. I was like, 'Whoa, this is probably my best song.' There's something lyrically about it."
  
  "This was the song that brought me to another level," she added in The Story Behind The Song. "The song was better than I was at the time."
• The song was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, and it won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. It was the second song written by Diane Warren to get an Academy Award nomination, following "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship (from the movie Mannequin) in 1987. Warren became a nearly perennial nominee in that category but never won. In 1997 her song "How Do I Live" (by LeAnn Rimes from Con Air) was thwarted by Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On."