Some of country music’s best songs are inspired by a real-life event. Sometimes it’s a cause for celebration, but some songs are inspired by tragedy. We found three country songs that were inspired by a heartbreaking true story.
Videos by American Songwriter
“The Father, My Son, And The Holy Ghost” by Craig Morgan
Craig Morgan and his wife, Karen, experienced every parent’s worst nightmare in 2016. Their 19-year-old son, Jerry Greer, accidentally drowned while tubing with some friends.
In 2019, Morgan released “The Father, My Son, And The Holy Ghost,” inspired by the loss of his son.
The song says, “I know my boy ain’t here, but he ain’t gone / In the mornings I wake up, give her a kiss, head to the kitchen / Pour a cup of wake-me-up and try to rouse up some ambition / Go outside, sit by myself, but I ain’t alone / I’ve got the Father, my son, and the Holy Ghost.”
“It woke me up at 3:30 in the morning,” Morgan recalls to Rolling Stone. “I was saying that whole chorus in my head, and I sat up and had tears in my eyes. I laid my head back down and thought, ‘Man, there is no way I’m going to remember this. So I need to get up and write it down.’ …I just cried and wrote and cried and wrote.”
“I Drive Your Truck” by Lee Brice
Lee Brice released “I Drive Your Truck” in 2012, on his Hard 2 Love album. The song is written by Jessi Alexander, Connie Harrington, and Jimmy Yeary.
“I Drive Your Truck” says, “I’ve cussed, I’ve prayed, I’ve said goodbye / Shook my fist and asked God why / These days when I’m missing you this much / I drive your truck / I roll every window down / And I burn up / Every back road in this town / I find a field, I tear it up / ‘Til all the pain’s a cloud of dust / Yeah, sometimes, I drive your truck.”
Harrington had the idea for “I Drive Your Truck” after hearing a father speaking on the radio about the loss of his son in Afghanistan while serving in the military.
“They were asking him questions about that, and asking him how he coped with the loss of his son,” Harrington tells The Tennessean. “And he said that he drove his truck, and began to describe it. … I wrote down post-it notes in the car, weeping, just hearing the details of his truck. I got with Jessi the next week and started the song.”
“Sissy’s Song” by Alan Jackson
Alan Jackson wrote “Sissy’s Song” by himself, releasing it in 2009. This entry on our list of heartbreaking country songs is about Jackson’s good friend and longtime employee, who was killed in a motorcycle accident.
“Sissy’s Song” begins with “Why did she have to go / So young I just don’t know why / Things happen half the time / Without reason, without rhyme / Lovely, sweet young woman / Daughter, wife and mother / Makes no sense to me / I just have to believe.”
“I wrote it for a girl that worked for us who died,” the Country Music Hall of Fame member tells The Boot. “She was a lady that looked after the whole house. Leslie Fitzgerald was her real name, but we called her Sissy … She was just somebody who was in our house every day … then, all of a sudden, [she was] gone. When people get old, you expect them to die, but it’s different when they are young, and it’s tragic like that.”
Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images
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