REO Speedwagon frontman Kevin Cronin says writing “Can’t Fight This Feeling” was a lengthy and difficult endeavor. He first started writing the verses, but couldn’t write the chorus.

He explained during an interview with Dan Rather and said: “I wrote a number of horrible choruses to these verses. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to file this and I’m just going to wait.’”

It was over a decade later when he read it again in his lyric notebook and said: “I looked at it and the very first lyric of the song is ‘I can’t fight this feeling any longer,’ and I was like, ‘That’s what this song is about! It was like right there all that time, hiding in clear sight.”

Cronin first started the song in 1973, it was released in 1984, and became a three-week #1 hit in 1985.