1979 Soft Rock Classic Inspired the Opening Line of No. 1 Hit Breakup Anthem Five Years Later
In 1979, The Babys had a major radio hit with "Every Time I Think of You."
Written by Jack Conrad and Ray Kennedy, the pop ballad about the power of love was the lead single from the British rock band's third album Head First and featured dynamic dueling vocals by John Waite and Myrna Matthews.
"Every Time I Think of You" peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1979, but the success came near the band's end.
In an interview shared on music historian Michael Cavacini's website, Waite noted that The Babys were "at the end" of their run by the time "Every Time I Think of You" came out, largely due to issues with their record company.
"We had huge success at first – really, really big. You could not turn on AM radio and not hear ‘Every Time I Think of You,'" the singer recalled. "And you couldn't turn on FM radio and not hear ‘Head First.' And they were both on the same record. I've never seen a record that successful till maybe The Police, but it was absolutely gigantic. We were touring with big bands, we were all over the TV, all over the radio, but then Chrysalis told us we weren't selling records…and it just stopped everybody in their tracks."
The Babys broke up in 1981, but Waite said the band's doomed history had a romanticism to it.
"It was a very, very good band," he told Classic Rock Revisited in an interview. "We went astray at the end. … It just became a fight between the record company and the band. It had a strange beauty to it as there was something about being really great and having fate hold you back. There was something dark about it like it wasn't meant to win. I kind of dig that. It is a romantic story. It had its time, and it was ahead of its time."
Five years after the success of "Every Time I Think of You," Waite pulled the title of the song for a solo tune that would become his biggest hit. The song, titled "Missing You," appeared on Waite's solo album No Brakes and opened with the line "Every time I think of you." The song hit No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 in September 1984 and made Waite a solo superstar.
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Waite once revealed that he wrote the lyrics to "Missing you" in 10 minutes.
"It came out of nowhere," he told Songfacts. "I used a line from a Babys song, ‘Every time I Think of You," which was a Babys song, just to get me started. And then I sang the whole first verse, bridge, and chorus without stopping. Then I had to stop, I was so overwhelmed. I stood back from the mic and I couldn't speak. Then I just rolled the tape again and got on with it."
"That's why I don't go to songwriting too often," he added. "I wait for it to be the last minute, because it just builds up. It's like turning on a faucet. I mean, ‘Missing You,' the lyric took about 10 minutes. And half the Babys songs were written like that."
Waite told Cavacini that when he wrote the "Missing You" lyrics that started with "Every time I think of you," he felt like he had come full circle.
"It knocked the wind out of me," he shared. "On the demo, I actually choke after the first two lines of the second verse and then I keep going," he shared. "But I knew…it was as if it was channeling through me. It was what I had been looking for. I had probably been looking for that song since The Babys. It was just the right song for the right time."
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This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 3:01 AM.