Songfacts®:

• In this romantic piano ballad, Stevie Wonder feels like he can conquer the world as long as his trusted partner is by his side. That person was Syreeta Wright, who was married to Wonder around this time. Like Wonder, Wright was part of the Motown family and a talented singer-songwriter. She and Wonder were co-workers as well as romantic partners; together, they wrote all the songs on Stevie's 1971 album Where I'm Coming From, including "If You Really Love Me."
  
  Wright and Wonder were married in 1970 but got divorced either in 1972 or 1974 - sources vary. They worked together until 1974 (Wonder produced her album Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta that year) even as their romance faltered. "You And I" recalls the best of their union, a time when they could lift each other to the heavens. The song could also relate to God or community.
• This song is all Stevie: He played all the instruments and sang all the vocals. By this time, his Motown contract stipulated that he had full artistic freedom, which he used to make music in his own intuitive way with no record company interference. His engineers, Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, were studio wizards who set up a custom synthesizer for him and made arrangements when he needed his band for sessions. Some tracks on the Talking Book album feature his band members in spots (bass player Scott Edwards is on "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life"; guitarist Ray Parker Jr. on "Maybe Your Baby"), but Wonder didn't need them on "You And I."
• Both Michelle and Barack Obama are huge fans of Stevie Wonder and the couple used this tune as their wedding song. As Barack Obama presented Wonder with the nation's highest award for pop music, the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, he joked that he might not even have got married without Stevie. The President quipped: "I think it's fair to say that had I not been a Stevie Wonder fan, Michelle might not have dated me, we might not have married. The fact that we agreed on Stevie was part of the essence of our courtship."
• Obama first revealed his love for Stevie Wonder's music during an interview with the June 2008 edition of Rolling Stone. He said: "If I had one musical hero, it would have to be Stevie Wonder. When I was at that point where you start getting involved in music, Stevie had that run with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Innervisions, and then Songs in the Key of Life. Those are as brilliant a set of five albums as we've ever seen."
• George Michael recorded a cover of this song in April 2011 as a wedding gift for Prince William and Kate Middleton. Michael, who was a friend of with Prince William's late mother Princess Diana, recalled on Piers Morgan's CNN show how it all came about: "The idea came to me last week... that I should perhaps kinda express my happiness at this marriage, in a way, publicly. It was an April day that happened to be like summer here in London and I was twittering and kinda got carried away and decided I was gonna make them [William and Kate] a new track... by Friday, so I've had a very busy week."
  
  He added: "When I was a child I dreamt of singing this song in my imagination... I used to dream of singing it in the school assembly hall, but I guess this is a slightly bigger deal than that."
• Barbra Streisand covered this on her 1975 Lazy Afternoon album. Wonder went on to work with Streisand on her 1985 The Broadway Album, playing the harmonica on the Show Boat number "Can't Help Lovin' That Man." They also sang "People" together for her 2014 duets album, Partners.