Country music is known to tug on the heartstrings. In a genre filled with a lot of storytelling in its songs, not all of the stories have happy endings. With that in mind, we picked four of the most heartbreaking songs in country music.
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1. "The Greatest Man I Never Knew" by Reba McEntire
Reba McEntire released "The Greatest Man I Never Knew" in 1992, from her For My Broken Heart album. The song, written by Richard Leigh and Layng Martine Jr., is about someone whose father lives their entire life without ever really connecting with their child.
With lines like "He was good at business / But there was business left to do / He never said he loved me / Guess he thought I knew," Leigh has said the song is based on real-life events. Both Leigh's parents were tragically killed in a car accident when he was just two years old. He wrote "The Greatest Man I Never Knew" after finding a clipping of his father's obituary.
2. "He Stopped Loving Her Today" by George Jones
It's hard to imagine a more heartbreaking song in country music than George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today." Written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam, the song tells the story of a man who keeps on loving a woman until he dies, even though the love wasn't reciprocated.
Arguably the biggest song of Jones' career, the song saved a then-floundering career, even though Jones at the time didn't want to record it.
"I looked Billy square in the eye and said, 'Nobody will buy that morbid son of a b--ch,'" Jones says in his autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All (via The Boot).
3. "Here Comes Goodbye" by Rascal Flatts
You can almost hear the angst in Rascal Flatts' "Here Comes Goodbye." Released in 2009 as the first single from their Unstoppable record, "Here Comes Goodbye" tells the story of a man who knows his relationship is about to end, even before he sees her.
The song, written by Clint Lagerberg and Chris Sligh, begins with "I can hear the truck tires coming up the gravel road / And it's not like her to drive that slow / Nothing's on the radio / Footsteps on the front porch / I hear my doorbell / She usually comes right in / Now I can tell / Here comes goodbye."
"Once it's over, you're wringing yourself out," Joe Don Rooney says of the song (via Songfacts). "That's what we want. That's the big thing we want on the big side of songs we cut. We're just lucky to have that one. It's one of the first songs we put on hold for the project."
4. "Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss
"Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss is country music gold in terms of heartbreaking songs. Written by Bill Anderson and Jon Randall, "Whiskey Lullaby" tells the story of a man who drinks himself to death after his significant other leaves him. After his death, she is overcome by guilt until she meets the same fate.
Anderson had the idea for a song called "Midnight Cigarette." But Randall, who was going through a divorce from Lorrie Morgan at the time, said something that turned into one of country music's most heartbreaking songs.
"He said, 'Well, I put the bottle to my head and pulled the trigger a few times,'" Anderson remembers (via American Songwriter). "And next thing I'm going, 'Forget the midnight cigarette! I love put the bottle to the head and pulled the trigger!'"
