Songfacts®:

• This upbeat dance song has a hidden meaning. On the surface, it finds Taylor Dayne asking her potential lover to take it slow and give her space so they can really get to know each other. But the song's co-writer, Alex Forbes, was also making a statement about a much bigger issue.
  
  "It was meaningful for me because I had lost at that point seven people I knew to AIDS, and it was very real for a lot of us," she said on the Songfacts Podcast. "I was talking about it with a friend of mine, Tom Finn, who was a DJ at The Palladium and had also, amazingly, been the bass player in the band that did 'Walk Away Renee' by The Left Banke. He said to me, 'There should be a song about not going too fast in relationships,' and I was like, 'That is a great idea,' and I came up with this concept of 'Don't Rush Me.'"
  
  "For me it's a song about people having one-night stands and becoming sexual with others without being careful," she added. "So the idea of 'Don't Rush Me' was also about that era that was very painful. People were dying right and left of AIDS."
• Alex Forbes wrote this song with Jeff Franzel, who is best known in the world of jazz as a pianist and composer. Forbes tried her hand at becoming a pop star but found her groove as a songwriter and songwriting coach. For both, "Don't Rush Me" was early in their careers and a solid stepping stone.
• When Taylor Dayne first sang "Don't Rush Me," it was for a demo so the song could be pitched to other artists - Dayne didn't have a record deal yet. But then she landed a deal with Arista and released the single "Tell It To My Heart," which became a surprise hit. Clive Davis at Arista quickly commissioned an album, so she needed songs in a hurry. Her producer, Ric Wake, remembered "Don't Rush Me" and had her record it for the album. So Dayne basically demoed her own song.
• This was the fourth and final single from Taylor Dayne's wildly successful debut album, released on Arista Records and overseen by Clive Davis. The first two singles, "Tell It To My Heart" and "Prove Your Love," were dance hits written by Seth Swirsky. Next came the ballad "I'll Always Love You," followed by "Don't Rush Me."
• This was released as a single a little over a year after the "Tell It To My Heart" single came out in late 1987, leading to Dayne's sudden stardom. In a Songfacts interview with Dayne, she said: "Within a year's time I was opening up for Michael Jackson, who was at the height of his career with the Bad tour. And I was on the road; I remember I never came home for about 15 months."
  
  Her next album, Can't Fight Fate, kept her on the charts for another year with four more hit singles including the #1 "Love Will Lead You Back." Her first seven singles all entered the Top 10.