"Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)" is a 1982 song by A Flock of Seagulls, the opening song and only hit single from their second album Listen.
The song exemplifies "synth-pop's spaced-out loneliness" and yearning for imagined, absent lovers, and is noted for its Wall of Sound-styled layer of synthesizer padding â a "multi-layered, hypnotic song", according to AllMusic.
According to lead singer Mike Score, "Wishing" was based on a real person. When recalling the experience with this person, he said, "It was the eve of the first trip we ever took to America, and I had met a girl. We went out for the night, and I didn't want to forget her, so I said, 'We're going on tour and I'll be back. I'd like to get a photograph of you, if I could get one.' And she said, 'No, because you're going to go on to be famous and you'll forget me.'"
Unlike the band's 1982 hit "I Ran (So Far Away)", largely a United States and Australian hit, "Wishing" performed strongly in the band's home country, the United Kingdom, and reached the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart; in the US, it reached the top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in mid-1983. It was popular in South Africa, reaching No. 8.