"Vision of Love" was the first song Carey and Margulies co-wrote after Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola signed Carey to a recording contract. The album version of the song was altered from Carey and Margulies's original demo recording, which had a 1950s-style shuffle.

The song's protagonist describes having a "vision of love" and of being eternally grateful not to a lover, but to God; the lyrics are also related to the realisation of Carey's dreams as a singer. Carey told Ebony magazine that the song "represents everything in my life" and "is a song from the heart." According to her, its lyrics are based on personal struggles she experienced when was younger, including her parents' divorce, moving frequently and the attitudes of the people in her neighborhoods to her ethnicity. Carey's vocal range in the song is Eb3-C7.

The song was nominated for three 1991 Grammy Awards: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (which it won), Record of the Year and Song of the Year. The song received the Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B/Soul Single, Female and a Songwriter Award at the BMI Pop Awards.

Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2005, "from those opening sci-fi-esque synths to that signature dog-whistle high note, Mariah's very first single is inspired." The Village Voice said that "Vision of Love" is the song that set off the melisma trend. In 2006, The New Yorker named the song "the Magna Carta of melisma" for it and Carey's influence on R&B singers and American Idol contestants. Also Rolling Stone said that "the fluttering strings of notes that decorate songs like "Vision of Love", inspired the entire American Idol vocal school, for better or worse, and virtually every other female R&B singer since the nineties." Slant Magazine critic also said "I think ["Vision of Love"] was a vision of the future world of American Idol." About.com said that "'Vision of Love' is one of the best songs of Mariah's recording career [...] It is simply one of the most stunning debut releases ever by a pop recording artist." SoulBounce.com listed "Vision of Love" #99 on the Top 100 Soul/R&B Songs of all time.

VH1 named "Vision of Love" the fourteenth greatest song of the 1990s. About.com ranked it fourth on its top ten pop hits of 1990 list and twenty-eighth on its top 100 pop songs of the 1990s list. Entertainment Weekly included it on their "10 Great (and 10 Grating) Karaoke Songs" list as a grating karaoke song, saying: "You cannot do this song. Seriously. Tackling this lung-crusher might seem like a fun challenge, but three minutes, five octaves, and one 10-second note later, you will realize that you did not conquer 'Vision of Love.' 'Vision of Love' conquered you." USA Today critic Elysa Gardner picked "Vision of Love" as one of the most intriguing tracks, saying that it is still Mariah's best song. T. Field and a research team discovered that "Vision of Love" is one of the songs that has physiological and biochemical effects on depressed female adolescents.

R&B singer Beyoncé Knowles said that she began doing vocal "runs" after listening to "Vision of Love" for the first time, and pop singer Mikaila said that the song is what made her want to sing. "Vision of Love" is also R&B singer Rihanna's favorite Mariah Carey song.

In the United States, "Vision of Love" entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 73 in the week of June 2, 1990, and it reached number 1 nine weeks later. It remained at number 1 for four weeks and was ranked sixth on the Hot 100 year-end chart. The single also reached number 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs for two weeks and Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks for three weeks. The RIAA certified "Vision of Love" as a gold single in August 1990.

"Vision of Love" reached the top ten in Australia, United Kingdom (total sales of 170,000.), Ireland and the Netherlands. It went to number 1 in Canada and New Zealand.

The single's music video, directed by Bojan Bazelli, features Carey on a darkly lit stage against a background of moving clouds and a staircase. The video was the second to be commissioned for the song, after a previous video was scrapped. According to Rolling Stone, an "informal source" said that the two videos cost a combined US$450,000. Columbia Records executive Don Ienner said the figure was "total bullshit," adding, "If we're gonna take the time and effort that we did with Mariah, on every level, then we're going to image her the right way. If it costs a few extra dollars to make a splash in terms of the right imaging, you go ahead and do it."

Two live versions of the track were released as exclusive live performance bonus tracks on non-U.S. releases of the singles. The first live version was culled from the EP MTV Unplugged (1992). The live version released on the single is not the same as the version found on the MTV Unplugged album; it was edited and the intro and outro were faded. The first version is most often found on the UK single of "I'll Be There" (1992). The other live performance is taken from Carey's DVD Fantasy: Mariah Carey at Madison Square Garden (1996), and is available on most European singles of "Open Arms" (1996).