"When You Come Back to Me" is a song recorded by Australian artist and actor Jason Donovan. It was released on 27 November 1989 as the first single from his second album Between the Lines. It charted in the UK on 9 December 1989, peaking at number two the following week and returning to the same position in January 1990, becoming one of his biggest selling singles in Britain. Reaching a disappointing number 40 in Australia, the track was Jason's final top 40 chart hit in his home country.

Background

As with all Donovan's early recordings, "When You Come Back to Me" was written and produced by the production team Stock, Aitken & Waterman. In addition, Matt Aitken contributed guitar; Mike Stock provided backing vocals, and both played keyboards on the track. The track was deliberately composed to evoke the Christmas season in the UK, without making any explicit auditory or lyrical references. Composer Mike Stock did not want to write a song that was "exploitative of the Christmas message" and was conscious an overtly festive song would go quickly out of date after Christmas had finished. However the song's evocation of a London Christmas has been blamed for its chart failure in Australia, where the track received a January 1990 release. An instrumental version and three remixes augmented the standard edit for the single release.

Critical reception

In 2017, Christian Guiltenane of British magazine Attitude considered the song as "an absolutely delightful sing-song that has choral oohs in the background 'nah nah nahs' in the chorus".

Track listings

Note: Mixed by Dave Ford, the "instrumental" version is not the instrumental of the single version to which it accompanied, but rather a stripped back guitar orientated version, identified on the 2009 iTunes releases as the "Guitar instrumental".

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications