At This Moment
1981 single by Billy Vera
"At This Moment" is a song written by Billy Vera and recorded live by Vera and his band under the name Billy Vera & the Beaters in 1981, during a string of performances at the Roxy in West Hollywood (January 15–17) and featured on their self-titled live album Billy and the Beaters, released that year as the album's second single, on the American subsidiary of Japan's Alfa Records. The song is more notable for its second run on the charts years after its initial release, when it was featured on television's Family Ties series, after which the song became a number 1 hit in early 1987.
Original release
When it was originally released as a single (Alfa 7005), as the follow-up to the album's first single, "I Can Take Care of Myself" (which had become the band's first Billboard Top 40 hit), "At this Moment" stalled on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 79 at the end of 1981.
Re-release
Five years after the original release, a studio version of "At This Moment" was included on several episodes of the NBC sitcom Family Ties during the 1985–86 season as the love song associated with Alex P. Keaton (played by Michael J. Fox) and his girlfriend Ellen Reed (played by Tracy Pollan, whom Fox eventually married in real life). Its exposure on Family Ties renewed interest in the song. Reissue label Rhino Records purchased the track from the band's original record label, Alfa (the American subsidiary of which was by then inactive), and re-released it in its original version as Rhino 74403. The tune then began a revived chart run, eventually hitting number 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts in January 1987.
The song also bears a rare distinction of becoming a crossover hit on both the Billboard R&B Chart and the Billboard Hot Country Chart, reaching number 70 and number 42 on these charts, respectively. As the song was starting to take off, it came to the attention of Ron Carpentier, President of RCI Music Promotion, who was hired for promotion of the song to radio, and soon after, the song hit the Billboard Hot Country Chart. It quickly sold over a million copies in the United States, becoming one of the last Gold-certified singles in the 45 rpm format.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “At This Moment” is 1981 single by Billy Vera. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Moment, single and Billy, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4812420. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1987 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “At This Moment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.