“At This Moment” by Billy Vera & the Beaters stands as one of the undeniably great weepers of the ‘80s. Folks who didn’t live through that decade might hear the song now and assume it was an immediate hit. After all, it has everything in place: a killer melody, heartfelt lyrics (whose meaning we examine below), and a stellar vocal performance from Vera, giving every last drop of energy to the live crowd who is part of the recording, urging him on for more.
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In actuality, “At This Moment” languished for several years largely unheard, before it was a rescued by an unlikely source: none other than actor Michael J. Fox. What was the inspiration for this classic ballad? Why did it originally go unnoticed? And how did Fox, and his sitcom alter ego Alex P. Keaton, deliver it from obscurity? Read on to hear an unlikely tale of pop music success.
A Beater’s Broken Heart
For the book Playing Back the ‘80s: A Decade of Unstoppable Hits, Billy Vera explained to this author how he started the process of writing his biggest hit. “It was the spring of 1977 and I had just met this girl,” he remembers. “I was 33 and she was a 20-year-old college girl. We started seeing each other and she described breaking up with her previous boyfriend in vivid detail, about how it crushed him and how he went off the deep end. So I started writing the song from what I perceived was his point of view. But I couldn’t finish it.”
“Usually if I can’t finish a song in three or four hours, I toss it. But this one, for some reason, I stuck in my mother’s piano bench. And then a year later, when the girl broke up with me, I was crushed beyond belief. To this day, I’ve never been as broken-hearted as I was. And that’s when I knew how the song ended and I finished it.”
Unfortunately, some record company issues meant that the track, which was included on the 1981 album Billy and the Beaters, received little promotion. To make matters worse, Vera and his backing band lost their record deal. It looked like the moment for “At This Moment” had passed.
The Ties That Bind
A few years later, Vera, who was by then making his living as an actor, received a phone call from Michael Weithorn, one of the key members of the creative team behind the hit NBC sitcom Family Ties, starring Michael J. Fox as a conservative teenager dealing with his former hippie parents. Weithorn had once seen the Beaters perform and remembered “At This Moment.” He wanted to use it for an episode where Alex dances with his new love interest Ellen (played by Tracy Pollan, Fox’s future wife).
Vera hustled into a studio to cut a new version of the song for the episode. Because he’d had songs used in TV shows before, he didn’t expect much. But then bags of fan mail began pouring in. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get anybody to do a re-release of the record in time to capitalize on the song’s first appearance on the show.
On October 2, 1986, the second episode of Family Ties’ fifth season aired. It finds Alex dealing with his breakup from Ellen, and he plays “At This Moment” on a jukebox as a bit of bittersweet nostalgia. This time around, the fan demand for the song was so overwhelming that it couldn’t be denied. “At This Moment” received a proper release and Vera, by then 42 years old, sailed right past all the whippersnappers on the pop charts and enjoyed his first No. 1 hit.
What Is “At This Moment” About?
Yes, Family Ties had a lot to do with the success of “At This Moment.” But if it hadn’t been such a memorable song, Weithorn would never have chosen it. Nor would fans have kept listening to it and buying it simply based on love for a TV show. Truth is, it’s a brilliant track, in large part because of the narrator’s touching, extemporaneous attempts to stave off the inevitable breakup that’s coming.
He tells her all the things that he’d do if she asked him, as well as all the hurtful things he’d never do that other suitors might. His desperation reaches a pinnacle when he exclaims, If you’d stay, I’d subtract 20 years from my life. All he wants is the one thing we as listeners can tell, from the hurt in Vera’s voice, he’ll never have: If I could just hold you again. The song goes down so smooth you probably didn’t even notice that none of the lines rhyme, something Vera himself didn’t even realize till a fan pointed it out to him years later.
Maybe you could argue that “At This Moment” by Billy Vera & the Beaters got a lucky break that few songs receive. But we prefer to view it as a wonderful song that deserved every bit of recognition it eventually enjoyed.
Photo: YouTube still of clip from NBC’s 1980s hit sitcom Family Ties
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