The song's looped guitar riff is sampled from America's 1972 hit "Ventura Highway". The loop played throughout the chorus is an interpolation of "Gymnopédie No. 1" by French classical composer Erik Satie, played in 4/4 time instead of the original 3/4. Jackson had searched for years for the catchy Satie track. "When I was a little girl and I used to come home from school, there was something called "The 3:30 Movie", and they used to play the MGM Musicals. There was a commercial. I remember watching Singin' in the Rain and there was a commercial with the lady all in white, and I don't know if it was for Dove or something like that, but they would play this, 'Da, da , da.' It was the Erik Satie. I never knew who the composer was, and this song never left me." 　　 　　Jackson said she came across the tune again about seven years later: "I was at Ralph Lauren and I said, 'Oh, my God! Is this the radio or is this a CD?' I said, 'Please tell me it's a CD.' They said, 'It's a CD—well, actually it's a Ralph Lauren CD and we don't have it anymore. I was like, 'Oh God...no,' and they gave me the CD." 　　 　　Jackson said, "I took it straight to Jimmy [Jam] and said, 'Jimmy, I've just got to share this with you,' and he saw my passion and my love for it. He didn't take the actual song, but he kind of put his own flavor to it in 'Someone To Call My Lover,' which takes me back to my childhood."[1] 　　 　　At the time of recording, Jackson had just divorced her longtime husband, René Elizondo, Jr., after nearly ten years of marriage. "Someone to Call My Lover", and several of the other songs on the All for You album, use Jackson's divorce and re-emergence into single life as central themes. 　　 　　The song's So So Def Remix was Jackson's first collaboration with Jermaine Dupri, and the single peaked at number three in the United States. The song earned Jackson a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2002, losing out to Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird". 　　 　　Jackson performed the song only on the All for You Tour. To date, it is the most recent of Jackson's singles to reach the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100.