Songfacts®:

• This song is about wishing to remember a love, or even stave off the passing of what could be a long-lasting love between two people. The lyric is heartfelt and engaging, but the song is best known for its groove, a supple slice of R&B-pop that evolved past the disco sound. That groove proved enduring: In 1997 it was interpolated to form the basis of Will Smith's "Men In Black," a #1 hit and the title track to his blockbuster movie. That song reworked the lyrics to "they won't let you remember" because the Men In Black erase the memories of those who have seen alien activity.
• Rushen was a prodigy, having won the 1972 Monterey Jazz Festival at the age of 18. She released her first album in 1974 and had a number of R&B hits, but "Forget Me Nots" was her only song to crack the Top 40 on the Hot 100.
• A forget-me-not is a kind of flower. It is traditionally given to someone so that person will remember you.
• Rushen wrote this song with the singer Terri McFadden and the bass player Freddie Washington - he also played on the track.
• Rushen's label, Elektra Records, didn't hear the hit potential in this song, so she had to fight for it, taking promotion into her own hands. "We knew clearly that the song 'Forget Me Nots' was a single but the record company people sat there and said, 'we don't hear anything on here we can do anything with,'" she told Soul Music.com. "We believed in 'Forget Me Nots' so I took most of my life savings – which was not a lot – and Charles Mims (the producer) took some of his and we hired an independent promoter to take it and run with it. We had good reason to believe the record company might be wrong. I toured that year also and man, the record took off so fast, faster than ever before and faster than what we expected. 'Forget Me Nots' took off like wildfire. Afterwards the president of the label found out I had used my life savings so he wrote me a check to reimburse me for the money I spent on hiring an independent promotion man!"
• George Michael sampled this song on his 1996 hit "Fastlove."
• In 1991 R&B group Tongue 'N' Cheek did a dance version peaking at #26 in the UK chart.
• This song plays in the trampoline scene of the 1988 Tom Hanks movie Big. It also appears in the films Clubbed (2008) and Fatal Affair (2020).