Songfacts®:

• Lovers Rock was the group's first album since 1992's Love Deluxe. Sophie Muller directed the music video for this song, approaching Sade Adu's return to the public eye with caution and sensitivity. "She had not done anything in eight years - there had not even been a photograph taken of her," Muller told Music Video Wire. "I think I was being protective the day we did it; I did not want to push her to do something incredibly difficult, but wanted to ease her back in."
• This song became a popular pick for wedding receptions. Celebrity couples Jennie Garth & Peter Facinelli and Dave Navarro & Carmen Electra were among those who used it as their first dance song. Both unions ended in divorce, but we're pretty sure the song wasn't to blame.
• Sade was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for this song, but lost to Nelly Furtado for "I'm Like A Bird."
• This song was used on Sex and the City for Samantha and Richard's rooftop dance in "The Good Fight" in 2002. It can also be heard on the animated series Daria ("Fizz Ed"), The L Word ("Last Word") and the Russian film Zhara.
• British four-piece The 1975 covered the song in 2017. Their version was part of a charity effort supporting the UK organization War Child. Speaking to BBC Radio 1's MistaJam, 1975 frontman Matt Healy discussed the song's relationship with contemporary music:
  
  "If you listen to Kanye, if you listen to Bon Iver, if you listen to Francis and the Lights, moments on that Chance record - that song, [Sade's] "By Your Side," has so much of that kind of identity," he said. "When I was listening to it, I was listening to it with this real kind of sense of modernity and thinking, 'Wow, this is still really, really forward-thinking.'"