Chart Rewind: In 1990, Stevie B Sent ‘The Postman Song’ to No. 1 on the Hot 100

While many listeners have surely dedicated Stevie B’s 1990 smash ballad “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” to a romantic interest, its writer, Warren Brooks, remembers that it was inspired by a different source.

“It was God talking to me, telling me He got my letter, and that whenever I needed Him, He’d be there for me,” Brooks tells Billboard. “I was feeling a little down one day, and talking to God, and God talking to me. “That’s how it came about. I just wrote down what came to me.”

On the Billboard Hot 100 dated Dec. 8, 1990, Stevie B sent the song (also featuring string arrangements by Brooks) to No. 1 for its first of four weeks at the summit. It marked the first, and to-date sole, leader for Brooks as a writer, and for the singer who had broken through with uptempo freestyle anthems including “Dreamin’ of Love,” “Spring Love (Come Back to Me)” and “I Wanna Be the One” in 1988-89.

With the release of Stevie B’s third LP, Love & Emotion (on LMR/RCA Records), he reached his highest Hot 100 rank to that point with the title cut, also penned solely by Brooks. The dance/pop song hit No. 15 in September 1990, paving the way for the singer’s first No. 1 three months later.

Brooks and Stevie B met in 1985, when the former finished writing “The Postman Song” after beginning it in 1983, and the latter gave it his stamp of approval. “Stevie heard me playing it on the piano and he said, ‘That sounds like a hit,'” Brooks recalls. “When he got his deal with LMR Records, he decided to [record] it. He really loved it.”

In topping the Hot 100, “The Postman Song” dethroned “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” the lead/title-track single from Whitney Houston’s third album. Also in the top 10 that week were enduring hits such as Mariah Carey’s “Love Takes Time,” DNA’s “Tom’s Diner,” featuring Suzanne Vega, and Madonna’s “Justify My Love.”

“I just felt, ‘It’s on now. I’m in the game’,” muses Brooks, who since 1991 has run Wab Nation Records, which he co-founded.

“The Postman Song” helped set the stage for Stevie B’s second-highest-charting Hot 100 hit, and further success with love songs, as follow-up ballad “I’ll Be by Your Side” rose to No. 12 in March 1991. Another AC-focused song, “Dream About You,” hit No. 29 in June 1995.

Three decades past its Hot 100 peak, “The Postman Song” ranks among the top 100 classics on Billboard‘s Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs chart. “I felt that the song had the right lyrics,” Brooks says. “I just thought that if it got a shot, it would do great things.”