Songfacts®:

• In her 1999 concert film Mirrorball, Sarah McLachlan said "I Will Remember You" is "about the fear of love, the fear of commitment, but at the same time not wanting to look back on your life with a lot of regrets."
• Throughout the '00s, "I Will Remember You" was the go-to song for memorial tributes, typically played under slow-motion footage of a person who died. Those "in memorium" segments at awards shows often used it.
  
  For this reason, it became known as a song about grieving, but it's really about a couple who are very much alive trying to archive their relationship so they can move forward knowing they'll always have the shared memories. This is clear if you listen to the verses, but most people don't. The song starts with the chorus, so by the time the verses that provide the nuance in the song come in, those videos are already producing tears.
• "I Will Remember You" was written for the 1995 film The Brothers McMullen and featured on the soundtrack. The music is based on an instrumental song called "Weep Not For The Memories" by the Irish singer Seamus Egan - it also appears in the film. Using that musical base, McLachlan wrote the song with Dave Merenda, who writes a lot of music for movies and TV.
• When "I Will Remember You" was released as a single in 1995, it didn't get much attention. In America, it charted at #65, which was McLachlan's highest placement to that point. In 1997, she released her hit album Surfacing (with "Building A Mystery" and "Adia") and launched the Lilith Fair, which garnered lots of attention. In 1999, she released a live version of "I Will Remember You," from her Mirrorball concert album, as a single, and it climbed to #14.
• The live version won the Grammy Award for best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 2000 ceremony. Two years earlier, she won the same award for "Building A Mystery."
• Because of its overuse in tribute videos, "I Will Remember You" is rife for parody, and has been used that way in many movies and TV shows. When Michael Che left The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart sang it to him in both tribute and jest. The song has also been used for comedic value in episodes of The Office, The Simpsons, 30 Rock, Parks And Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
• If this song makes you think of frightened dogs and cats looking for homes, that's because you're getting it mixed up with "Angel," the Sarah McLachlan ballad that played in her public service announcements for the ASPCA. Those started airing in 2007, typically catching us with our guard down while watching late-night TV. McLachlan narrates the spots, which were very effective.
  
  Between the animal rescue and the "I Will Remember You" memorial segments, McLachlan earned a reputation as a heedless tugger of heartstrings, an image she didn't mind sending up from time to time, which explains why she didn't mind authorizing "I Will Remember You" for shows like The Simpsons.