Country music has some seriously heartbreaking songs. Whether it's about the end of a relationship, a death or something else, country music has plenty of heartbreaking songs. We picked four country music songs that are bound to break anyone's heart.
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1. "She Thinks His Name Was John" by Reba McEntire
Reba McEntire released "She Thinks His Name Was John" in 1994, from her Read My Mind album. The song, written by Sandy Knox and Steve Rosen, is about a woman who died of AIDS, after becoming HIV-positive via a one-night stand.
"She won't know love, have a marriage, or sing lullabies," McEntire sings. "She lays all alone and cries herself to sleep / 'Cause she let a stranger kill her hopes and her dreams."
Heartrbreakingly, the song was at least partially inspired by a true story. Knox's brother passed away in 1984 from AIDS, after receiving a blood transfusion.
2. "Walkaway Joe" by Trisha Yearwood
Trisha Yearwood released "Walkaway Joe" in 1992, from her sophomore Hearts in Armor album. The song, which she sings with Don Henley, was written by Vince Melamed and Greg Barnhill. "Walkaway Joe" is a heartbreaking country song about teenage love gone very, very wrong. A girl runs away with a boy she loves, only for him to leave her in a cheap motel.
"Somewhere in a roadside motel room / Alone in the silence she wakes up too soon and reaches for his arms," Yearwood sings. "But she'll just keep reachin' on / 'Cause the cold hard truth revealed what it had known / That boy was just a walkway Joe."
"As the track was going down, we all, all of the musicians, we all were like, 'I don't know what's going to happen with this song. But there's something really special happening," Yearwood recalls on
Katie & Co.Interestingly, Matthew McConaughey stars in the video.
3. "He Stopped Loving Her Today" by George Jones
It's hard to think of a more heartbreaking song in country music than "He Stopped Loving Her Today." George Jones released the song in 1980, from his I Am What I Am record. Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam wrote the song. It concludes with "He stopped loving her today / They placed a wreath upon his door / And soon they'll carry him away / He stopped loving her today."
The song is about a man who loves a woman who left him until he dies. It's so sad that Jones almost didn't record it. In Bob Allen's George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, Allen says producer Billy Sherrill had to convince Jones of the song's potential.
"I looked Billy square in the eye and said, 'Nobody will buy that morbid son of a bit--." Later, Jones admitted his mistake, in his I Lived To Tell It All biography.
"To put it simply, I was back on top," Jones says. "Just that quickly. I don't want to belabor this comparison, but a four-decade career was salvaged by a three-minute song."
4. "Marry Me" by Thomas Rhett
Before Thomas Rhett released his 2017 Life Changes album, when fans saw the title "Marry Me," they assumed it would be a romantic tune, but they were very, very wrong. Rhett wrote the song with Shane McAnally, Ashley Gorley and Jesse Frasure, about a man who loves a woman who marries someone else.
"I'll wear my black suit, black tie, hide out in the back," Rhett sings. "I'll do a strong shot of whiskey straight out the flask / I'll try to make it through without cryin' so nobody sees / Yeah, she wants to get married / But she don't wanna marry me."
Rhett might not have written the heartbreaking song about his wife Lauren, but she inspired the song - sort of.
"We wrote that song from a place that could have been my life," Rhett tells The Boot. "Everybody has those moments in life where they can either go left or go right, and if you go left, you'll never know what could have been in the other direction. That's where I was at a certain point with my now-wife, Lauren.
"The song was written out of this space where I knew that if I had never told Lauren how I felt about her, I probably have been invited to her wedding and would have watched her marry somebody else," he continues. "I probably wouldn't have been quite as sad as the guy in the music video for the song, but it would definitely still have wrecked me."
