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To Be With You
Written by Eric Martin, David Grahame
Performed by Mr. Big
Released November 22, 1991
Hold on, little girl
Show me what he’s done to you
Stand up, little girl
Broken heart can’t be that bad
When it’s through, it’s through
Fate would twist the both of you
So come on, baby, come on over
Let me be the one to show you
I’m the one who wants to be with you
Deep inside, I hope you feel it too (feel it too)
Waited on a line of greens and blues (waited on a line)
Just to be the next to be with you
Build up your confidence
So you can be on top for once
Wake up, who cares about
Little boys that talk too much?
I seen it all go down
The game of love was all rained out
So come on, baby, come on over
Let me be the one to hold you
I’m the one who wants to be with you (I’m the one, yeah)
Deep inside, I hope you feel it too (feel it too)
Waited on a line of greens and blues (waited on a line, yeah)
Just to be the next to be with you
Why be alone when we can be together, baby?
You can make my life worthwhile
I can make you start to smile
When it’s through, it’s through
Fate would twist the both of you
Come on, baby, come on over
Let me be the one to show you
I’m the one who wants to be with you (I’m the one)
Deep inside, I hope you feel it too (feel it too)
Waited on a line of greens and blues (waited on a line)
Yeah, just to be the next to be with you
I’m the one who wants to be with you (I’m the one)
Deep inside, I hope (deep inside) you feel it too (you feel it too)
Waited on a line of greens and blues (waited on that line)
Yeah, just to be the next to be with you
Just to be the next to be with you, ooh
____________________________
The early 90s were a fantastic, but a little bit weird, time for music. Grunge had just burst onto the scene and drove a dagger into the “coolness” of a lot of 80s music trends in so doing. New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer were new and ubiquitous. Country music was going through a renaissance with artists like Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Travis Tritt, Alan Jackson, and Clint Black revitalizing the genre. But there were a couple of years there were all of this newness had not quite replaced the old, so we had a lot of fun overlap.
Mr. Big was a hair metal band that arrived just as that genre of band was leaving the big stages. If you go listen to their other stuff, it bears little resemblance to this ballad. But I think, in part due to the dearth of power ballad songs being released in the very early 90s (a thing hair metal bands supplied more reliably a few years earlier before they stopped being cool) there was kind of a wide open lane for a relative unknown like Mr. Big to get one of their ballad over with the public. They took advantage.
One thing always bothered me about this song, though. What the heck does it mean to be “waiting on a line of greens and blues’? Let’s find out:
via insidehook.com
Writing and Recording
“I wrote the song when I was a kid, and then I got a publishing deal, and I finally got to get off my father’s couch in his house. I made a little publishing check, and they hooked me up with this guy named David Grahame. He was a bass player and in a play called Beatlemania. He was kind of a Beatle-head.
“When we first got together, he goes, ‘Well, what have you got?’ Anytime you write with anybody, it’s 50-50 all the way. I said, ‘Man, I have this song. It’s called ‘To Be With You,’ and it was pretty much the nucleus of the song—but it was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young–sounding. He said, ‘Let’s do it like ‘Give Peace a Chance.’ [mimics the beat of the song] That little [suggestion he made] was brilliant.
“[The original demo] was piano, acoustic guitar, [and] that ‘Wild World’ drumbeat. Legend has it that Cat Stevens stepped on his guitar case [for the beat]. We had a bass drum or a suitcase, handclaps, and a piano. I played piano, David played acoustic guitar, and we just added all these harmonies. Mr. Big didn’t [really] do anything different except that awesome solo by Paul Gilbert.”
How It Got on ‘Lean Into It’ and the Radio
“Our manager [was] Herbie Herbert [who] managed Journey and Santana back in the day. Atlantic Records didn’t feel ‘To Be With You’; they thought, ‘Nah, it’s not going to work with this band.’ Herbie begged them to put out ‘To Be With You.’ They were going to dump us.
“He gathered the tribes of all the radio station people he knew, programmers and marketing people, and said, ‘We need to come up with some sort of concept to break this song for this band.’
“I remember the format was ‘smash or trash.’ It was like, you played the record at some random time at night and if you liked this record, you called it a ‘smash,’ if you didn’t, ‘trash,’ and [they’d] never play it again. Lucky for us, it spread like wildfire, and it was a smash.”
Who’s the ‘You’ in the Song?
“There were two different things going on. It was a friend of mine named Patricia Reynolds, and I also [originally] played it live in my front yard to my sister’s friends.
“[Patricia’s now] married to a famous Scottish musician, and I think I ran into her a couple of times, and she was like, ‘I had no idea you loved me!’ She was just a really, really great friend. Read poetry to me, helped me write songs, and she got a lot of attention—a lot of guys liked her and broke her heart. I was her shoulder to cry on. But I misconstrued that for love.”
Mr. Big at the American Music Awards, 1993. Martin tells RCL that it was there that they realized grunge had taken over; Pearl Jam beat them out in the Favorite Heavy Metal/Hard Rock New Artist category. (left to right): Paul Gilbert, Billy Sheehan, Eric Martin, and Pat Torpey. (Miranda Shen/Fotos International/Getty Images)
What ‘Waiting on a Line of Greens and Blues’ Means in the Chorus
“It’s a two-parter. Patricia was really a super pretty girl—she was so smart and poetic and Zen-y. But there were some days that I just couldn’t get a chance to talk to her, and I had to wait in line to talk to her. There would be so many boys in front of me. So that’s ‘waiting on a line.’
“And ‘greens and blues’: She gave me a mood ring, and greens were happy and blues were sad. ‘Waiting on a line of greens and blues’ … it wasn’t just about me, it was about her. Because she’d have all this attention and everybody loved her, but then she’d fall in love and they’d break her heart.”
So… it’s a vague reference to a mood ring (green is happiness and blue is sadness.)
I never actually minded the “greens and blues” line, but I had no idea what he was talking about. My main and actual gripe with this song, lyrically, is that I think “you can make my life worthwhile” is cringey and probably a little too much pressure to put on someone you’re wooing. It’s definitely a lyric written by a teenager. However… it’s also the kind of lyric that plays well with the teenagers who listen to music. And if we’re being honest, most ballads and even TV/film romance is pretty cringey and impossible to pull off in real life without coming across as a bit desperate or creepy.
To Be With You was a massive, massive hit globally. You couldn’t get away from this song for a good long while. Do we know what resonated about this song? I’d guess a lot of it has to do with the music video (which I’ll show below.)
Weekly charts
| Chart (1991–1992) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australia (ARIA) | 1 |
| Austria (Ö3 Austria Top 40) | 1 |
| Belgium (Ultratop 50 Flanders) | 1 |
| Canada Top Singles (RPM) | 1 |
| Canada Adult Contemporary (RPM) | 4 |
| Denmark (IFPI) | 1 |
| Europe (Eurochart Hot 100) | 1 |
| Europe (European Hit Radio) | 3 |
| Finland (Suomen virallinen lista) | 6 |
| France (SNEP) | 10 |
| Germany (GfK) | 1 |
| Ireland (IRMA) | 2 |
| Netherlands (Dutch Top 40) | 1 |
| Netherlands (Single Top 100) | 1 |
| New Zealand (Recorded Music NZ) | 1 |
| Norway (VG-lista) | 1 |
| Sweden (Sverigetopplistan) | 1 |
| Switzerland (Schweizer Hitparade) | 1 |
| UK Singles (OCC) | 3 |
| UK Singles (MRIB) | 1 |
| UK Airplay (Music Week) | 1 |
| US Billboard Hot 100 | 1 |
| US Adult Contemporary (Billboard) | 11 |
| US Album Rock Tracks (Billboard) | 19 |
| US Cash Box Top 100 | 1 |
This song is an earworm, so be warned before you listen / watch the music video. It also very much captures a certain vibe of that time period. But as I’ve started to see Gen Z beginning to embiggen their hair, I think we’re ready.
BTW, I am reliably informed that these guys were considered very attractive back in the early 90s. I’m not the target audience, mind you, but I don’t see it. Then again, I think women are biologically / emotionally vulnerable to groups of dudes singing together and enjoying life. That guy sitting in the back, just clapping, is my favorite. (I definitely encourage the young fellas out there who are single and ready to mingle to hunt for love in a harmony pack.)
So what do we think? Is this song a banger, or nah?
