Story Behind the Song: Don Williams’ ‘I Believe in You’.
“I believe in love, I believe in music/ I believe in magic, and I believe in you.”
Don Williams’ 1980 hit “I Believe In You” is an “honest” song with “simple lyrics,” according to Roger Cook, who co-wrote it with the late Sam Hogin. That doesn’t mean the country classic was a simple one to write. Cook shared the “Story Behind the Song” with Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.
Bart Herbison: How many times has somebody just said, “Hey man … I Believe in You”? You wrote that fantastic song with …
Roger Cook: I wrote it with Sammy Hogin.
Bart Herbison: The late Sam Hogin. Well, you thought you wrote it by yourself as well.
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RC: I thought I had the song finished. Then one day I looked at it, and I suddenly got unhappy. A lot of the lyrical images were dumb. I won’t go into details, but they were dumb. We were never going to get it cut the way it was.
BH: Do you remember what it was like?
RC: The lines about the rising costs of getting high. Of course, Don wasn’t going sing that. He sang “the rising cost of getting by,” you know. And “Sometimes I don’t give a d—.” He wouldn’t sing that.
BH: I remember the first time I heard this record, and he was already a huge star. But I think that cemented this stature and it just kept going after that. How did this song get to him? Because other people have recorded it. But, sometimes Roger, there’s a song and there’s an artist and somewhere out in the universe.
RC: They should meet.
BH: Just meant to be.
RC: Eventually, when Sam and I sat around until 2 in the morning one night, we had the lyric tight. I finally was really happy with the lyric. And went in and made a really good demo of it. And, about two or three days later, Garth called me one day, Garth Fundis, who was producing Don. He said, “If you got anything for Don, we’re going in the studio. We could use a song or two.” I said, “I’ve just written a song.” I said, “I can hear Don singing it.” He said, “I’ll come straight over.” Nobody had heard it at that point.
