Composer
Billy Goldenberg and lyricist Walter Earl Brown were asked to write a song to replace "
I'll Be Home for Christmas" as the grand finale on NBC's
Elvis, taped from June 20–23, 1968 (now also known as '
68 Comeback Special). Knowing about Presley's fondness for
Martin Luther King Jr., and about his devastation related to his
then-recent assassination in Memphis, Brown wrote "If I Can Dream" with Presley in mind. After Presley heard the demo, he proclaimed: "I'm never going to sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another movie I don't believe in". According to
Steve Binder, who directed Elvis'
68 Comeback Special, the song was also motivated by the
assassination of Robert F. Kennedy which occurred a few weeks prior to its recording. Binder claimed in a 2005 interview that "One night when we were rehearsing, the television set was on the other room and all of a sudden there was this moment of silence. And I said, 'I think Bobby Kennedy's just been shot'. And we all rushed into the other office and that's exactly what happened. They had live at the Ambassador Hotel, Kennedy making his speech. We were in the piano room at the time, but there was just something weird that evening and I just sensed something had gone wrong. Then we spent the whole night basically talking about the Kennedy assassination, of both Bobby and John." Presley associate
Jerry Schilling has said, "I consider Elvis to be a writer on this song. That song was him expressing how he truly felt." == Recording success ==