I’ll Be Seeing You is a 1938 pop standard written by Sammy Fain (music) and Irving Kahal (lyrics). It’s a tender torch song about missing a loved one and the longing that survives distance and time, a theme that made it a wartime staple in the 1940s. The song was published in 1938 by Marlo Music Corporation and first heard in the Broadway show Right This Way, which closed after fifteen performances. The earliest recording was by Dick Todd in 1940 on Bluebird Records, and it gained major popularity with Bing Crosby’s 1944 version which topped the charts, while Frank Sinatra’s 1940 recording with Tommy Dorsey also charted that year. The tune has appeared on various albums and in films, including the 1944 film I’ll Be Seeing You which took its title from the song, and later Sinatra’s 1961 I Remember Tommy recording and Dinah Shore’s Dinah Sings, Previn Plays (1960). Notable later renditions include Vera Lynn on Yours (1961) and Brenda Lee on Sincerely, Brenda Lee (1962). In popular culture, Billie Holiday’s 1944 recording was used as NASA’s final transmission from the Opportunity rover in 2019, underscoring the song’s enduring poignancy. The piece remains a beloved standard of the Great American Songbook, widely covered by artists from Norah Jones to Barbra Streisand, and it is commonly classified as a pop standard or torch song.
