“When I’m With You” was written by Sherrif’s keyboardist Arnold Lanni after meeting & falling in love with Valeri Brown.

He said:

I sat down, put my coffee on the piano, tinkled some ivories, and four minutes later 80 percent of the song was written. On Valentine’s Day I played the song for Valeri and said, “I don’t have anything, this is all I can give you right now. It’s yours. Valeri loved the song; two years later she married me.

The song first peaked at #61 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983. Due to the low performance of the song, Sheriff later disbanded.

In 1988, Brian Phillips (a program director at KDWB in Minneapolis) began playing the song and other national radio stations followed suit as well and because of it, Capitol Records re-released the song as a single.

The re-release of “When I’m With You” topped the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary for a week in February of 1989.