Song / I Only Wanna Be With you
Samantha Fox / I Only Wanna Be With You
AMBO Count
474,372
"I Only Want to Be with You" is a song written by Mike Hawker and Ivor Raymonde. The debut solo single released by British singer Dusty Springfield under her long-time producer Johnny Franz, "I Only Want to Be with You" peaked at number 4 on the UK Singles chart in January 1964. Three remakes of the song have been UK chart hits, the first two by the Bay City Rollers (1976) and the Tourists (1979) matching the number 4 peak of the Dusty Springfield original, while the 1989 remake by Samantha Fox peaked at number 16.
In 1988, English singer Samantha Fox covered the song as "I Only Wanna Be with You" for her third studio album, I Wanna Have Some Fun (1988).
Fox would recall the song as being the first song she ever learned to sing, the Dusty Springfield original version being among a stack of singles her mother handed down to Fox when Fox was aged ten.
Released as the follow-up single to the album's title cut, "I Only Wanna Be With You" was promoted with a music video which included scenes of Fox hunting through trash cans, dancing, fireworks, and the singer in bed with her bespectacled lover. Fox also promoted the song via televised performances, including those on Top of the Pops in 1989 and Viva el espectáculo on TVE1 in 1990.
"I Only Wanna Be with You" essentially earned Fox her final global hit single. In the United States, where "I Wanna Have Some Fun" had been a Top Ten hit, "I Only Wanna Be with You" rose no higher than number 31 and would mark Fox's final Billboard Hot 100 appearance: in Fox's native UK her version outperformed her previous six single releases with a number-16 peak, but would also become Fox' final major hit bar her 1998 one-off comeback single "Santa Maria".