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When he was young, Richie watched beautiful women walk past but was too shy to talk to them. He thought to himself, "Hello, is it me you're looking for?"

Years later he started to write a song using the phrase but got stuck and gave up, but his record producer liked the line and urged him to finish it.

In an interview broadcast in the UK on Channel 4's Top 100 Number One Hits, Richie said he had been thanked by a large number of normally tongue-tied men who had proposed marriage after a slow dance to the song.

In the music video story,  Richie's character (a music teacher) having a seemingly unrequited love for a blind arts student (played by Laura Carrington, an actress who is not blind) until he discovers she shares the feeling as demonstrated by the discovery that she is sculpting a likeness of his head

The third single from Richie's multi-platinum album Can't Slow Down, the song was released in 1984 and reached number one on three Billboard music charts: the pop chart (for two weeks), the R&B chart (for three weeks), and the adult contemporary chart (for six weeks). The song also went to #1 on the UK Singles Chart.