Songfacts®:

• "You Do Something To Me" has soundtracked countless candlelit moments and first dances. Couples have bonded over it, and it's often heard at weddings. Which is all very sweet, except the song, as Paul Weller himself will tell you with a kind of amused bemusement, is "really about unattainable love."
  
  You see, the song is actually about the tension between desire and the reality of love that remains just out of reach. Weller is yearning for a love he hasn't got. The lyric, "I'm hanging on the wire, for a love I'll never find" is, after all, not the most encouraging sentiment to waltz to.
  
  "I'm told by so many people they had it played at their wedding, the first dance," Weller said. "But you can interpret it whichever way you want."
• This minor-chord song was inspired by a piece of sheet music Weller found while working on his earlier album, Wild Wood, at the Manor in Oxford. Although he couldn't read the music, he could read the chord symbols above it - possibly from an old standard or classical piece. He appropriated some of those chord changes, which then kick-started the writing of the song.
  
  Weller said, "I was just playing the chords as they were written and I thought, 'They're nice.'"
• Initially, Weller didn't think the song was meant for him. "I tried to get it to Joe Cocker," he told Mojo magazine. "I heard – whether this is true or not – that Ray Charles, before he passed, was gonna make a record, and he was thinking of doing 'You Do Something To Me.' That would have been amazing."
  
  Weller worried the tune was too "middle of the road" for him, but when he finally recorded it during the Stanley Road sessions, his doubts evaporated. "Once I cut it, it was, are you f---ing joking! This is going on the record."
• Weller co-produced the song with Brendan Lynch, who had also worked on Weller's previous two solo albums, Paul Weller and Wild Wood. The other musicians are:
  
  Steve White: drums
  Yolanda Charles: bass guitar
  Helen Turner: organ
  
  Steve White was Paul Weller's drummer from 1983 to 2007, spanning approximately 24 years of continuous collaboration, including both The Style Council and Weller's solo work. His brother, Alan White, is also a drummer who played for Oasis for 9 years (1995–2004).
• "You Do Something to Me" has become a fixture of Weller's live shows. It's been covered by the likes of Roachford, and in 2019 Weller did a duet version with Celeste.
• The song was used in the 2013 movie I Give It A Year and plays in the 2017 "Home" episode of the Netflix TV show The Punisher.