Missing You Now
by Michael Bolton (featuring Kenny G)

Album: Time, Love & Tenderness (1991)
Charted: 28 12
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This song is about being in that stage of love when you start missing a person the moment you're away from them. It's the kind of song Michael Bolton could deliver right to the doorstep, with a yearning vocal that sounds like he's almost in pain he's missing her so badly.

    It was the fourth single from his Time, Love & Tenderness album, and like the previous three, it went to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, putting Bolton in league with Richard Marx and Bryan Adams as soft rock superstars.
  • Kenny G teams with Bolton on this track to contribute some of his signature soprano saxophone licks. The two have a lot in common besides decadent hair. Both had their breakthroughs in 1987, when Kenny G charted with "Songbird" and Bolton had hits with "That's What Love Is All About" and his cover of "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay." And they are both longtime punching bags of critics who feel their music somehow defiles their respective genres. They even have the saxophone in common: that was the first instrument Bolton started to play. He was 7 years old when he picked it up.
  • The hit songwriter Diane Warren wrote "Missing You Now" with Bolton and Bolton's producer, Walter Afanasieff. Warren was a fixture on charts, writing hits like "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" (Starship) and "Look Away" (Chicago). She and Bolton have something in common: Early on, they both wrote hits for Laura Branigan, with Warren composing "Solitaire" and Bolton "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You," a song he later recorded himself.

    As for Walter Afanasieff, his name isn't well known unless you're one of those people who looks at liner notes, in which case you're quite familiar with his work. He has credits on a lot of Mariah Carey tracks and is the connection to Kenny G, having worked on Kenny's tracks "Don't Make Me Wait For Love" and "Going Home."

    With this combination of Bolton, Kenny G, Warren and Afanasieff, it would have been surprising if this song wasn't a hit.
  • In the music video, Teri Hatcher plays Bolton's love interest. She was little known at the time, later starring in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Desperate Housewives. Bolton was recently divorced, and tabloids linked him romantically to just about every woman he was seen with, including Hatcher. One of his rare confirmed relationships was with Hatcher's Desperate Housewives co-star Nicollette Sheridan; they were engaged for a time but never got married.

    The video was directed by Jim Yukich, who did a lot of videos for Genesis and their various offshoots, mostly Phil Collins' solo work.

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