Songfacts®:

• Donna Lewis is a singer-songwriter from Cardiff, Wales, whose only major hit was this love song. The track was released in the US on May 14, 1996 as the lead single from her debut album, Now in a Minute. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying there for nine weeks during the summer of 1996, and was held off the summit by "Macarena" by Los Del Rio. The tune received 12 million airplays on US radio becoming one of the most played songs of the 1990s.
• The song peaked at #5 in Lewis' home country. Outside the United Kingdom, it peaked within the top ten of the charts in many European countries as well as Australia and New Zealand.
• The song was inspired by the H. E. Bates romantic novel Love for Lydia, which is set in the 1920s. Lewis explained to Billboard magazine in 1996: "The author wrote it in such a descriptive and beautiful way, set in English countryside, that I wanted to try and create this atmosphere in the song. When I wrote its melody I wanted to write something simple, remembering falling in love for the first time in the summer, that magical wonderful feeling. That was it really, the whole thing just came together."
• The track was covered in 2016 by Australian pop singer Betty Who, peaking at #6 on the ARIA Singles Chart. When Who recorded the song with her producer Peter Thomas, she did not foresee it as a hit single. She told The Independent:
  
  "When Peter and I did the cover, it was supposed to be just that. A cover. A cute little moment, a song I could add to my live show, nothing too serious, no press or promotion around it. But of course, as Amy Poehler taught me, if you treat your career like a bad boyfriend it will come crawling back to you on its hands and knees offering you the world.
  
  So something about my lack of commitment to this song somehow led it to be one of the biggest songs I've ever put out. Not to mention, now it's one of my favourite (if not my #1 favourite) songs to perform. There's something magical in what Peter did, probably because it was accidental. But I have loved this song since it came out when I was 5 years old, and still to this day love it with every part of me."
• Lewis' follow-up single "Without Love" was a minor hit, peaking at #41 in the US and #39 in the UK. Lewis went on to record "At the Beginning" with Richard Marx for the 1997 film Anastasia, which also reached the Hot 100's Top 50.
  
  Her second album, 1998's Blue Planet, won critical acclaim, but it was largely overlooked by the public. Lewis then parted ways with Atlantic Records and independently released a couple of LPs, as well as featuring as a guest vocalist on several dance music recordings. In 2015, she released Brand New Day, her first full-length album in nearly a decade, on the independent American jazz record label Palmetto Records.