It's hard to believe, but George Jones really hated one of his biggest hits, at least at first. The Country Music Hall of Fame member once revealed that he didn't like "He Stopped Loving Her Today," a song that remains one of country music's biggest hits of all time.
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In Bob Allen's George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, Allen recalls Jones arguing with producer Billy Sherrill about recording "He Stopped Loving Her Today."
"He thought it was too long, too sad, too depressing and that nobody would ever play it," Allen writes (via Whiskey Riff). "He hated the melody and wouldn't learn it."
Even Jones later admitted he didn't want to release the song, in his own I Lived To Tell It All autobiography.
"I looked Billy square in the eye and said, 'Nobody will buy that morbid son of a bit--."
The Story Behind "He Stopped Loving Her Today"
Jones was deep in addiction when he recorded "He Stopped Loving Her Today," which made it especially challenging for him to record it. He also kept confusing the song with Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through The Night." For the spoken part, Jones kept slurring his words, so much so that Sherrill had to splice together multiple recordings.
But later, Jones acknowledged that "He Stopped Loving Her Today," written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam, was one of the most pivotal songs of his career. The song gave Jones a Grammy, and his first No. 1 single in six years.
"To put it simply, I was back on top," Jones says in I Lived To Tell It All. "Just that quickly. I don't want to belabor this comparison, but a four-decade career was salvaged by a three-minute song."
"He Stopped Loving Her Today" is arguably one of the saddest songs in country music.
"It's the story of a man whose love was so strong that the only way he could get over this woman was to die," Braddock says (via Songfacts). "I think he was a terrible role model, a very bad role model. The man was obsessed with this woman and he never got over. He never moved on,"
