Not only that, the song's confessional nature inspired guitarist Gary Richrath to dust off an emotional ballad of his own:

Within a few days Gary remembered a slow song he had never played for anyone called "Don't Let Me Down", which he had written about the same painful subject matter as "Keep On Loving You". He played me the song, I immediately loved it, suggested a few changes including a new title, and within a couple of hours we had "Take It On The Run."

You remember that one, right? "Heard it from a friend who // heard it from a friend who // heard it from another you'd been messin' 'round." So what happened when REO freakin' Speedwagon dug deep?

We now officially had our momentum back. We spent a week at Crystal, a funky Hollywood recording studio, making the demo tapes which would become our next album. Named for the out of control status of our collective personal lives, "Hi Infidelity" would go on to become the number one album in the US for six months in 1981, and sell ten million copies around the world. Not bad for five boneheads from the Midwest!

The one part of this story I should really remember, but don't at all, is that the wife of one of those two guys ended up in Prague in the mid-'90s, and hung out a lot with a couple of my friends. I probably met her once or twice, and remember having the impression that she had influenced a lot of REO songwriting & also sang backups ... but I remembers no more. Basart? Callaghan?

And yes, as soon as I move into my new house (with an office roughly 100 times further away from my poor wife than where I'm sitting now), you know damn well I'm going to work up a version of "Keep on Lovin' You." Take out some of the power-chord double-hits, bring up the desperation level a couple of notches, replace guitar solo with an accordion...

This post originally appeared at MattWelch.com.