There likely isn’t a genre known for heartbreaking “I miss you” songs more than country music. The genre is full of songs that pine for a love in the past.
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We picked three of the most devastating heartbreak songs in country music.
“The Dance” by Garth Brooks
Garth Brooks released “The Dance” in 1990. Written by Tony Arata, the song is a painful reminiscing of a love that is no more, although the memories are sweet enough that there are no regrets.
“And now I’m glad I didn’t know / The way it all would end, the way it all would go,” Brooks sings. “Our lives are better left to chance / I could have missed the pain / But I’d have had to miss the dance.”
“To a lot of people, I guess ‘The Dance is a love gone bad song,” says Brooks (via Wide Open Country). “Which, you know, that it is. But to me it’s always been a song about life. Or maybe the loss of those people that have given the ultimate sacrifice for a dream that they believed in, like the John F. Kennedy’s or the Martin Luther King’s. John Wayne’s or the Keith Whitley’s. And if they could come back, I think they would say to us what the lyrics of ‘The Dance’ say.”
“The Dance” is unquestionably one of the saddest country music songs of all time.
“What Hurts the Most” by Rascal Flatts
One of Rascal Flatts’ saddest songs is without doubt “What Hurts the Most.” Written by Jeffrey Steele and Steve Robson, the multi-platinum song, released in 2006, is a tragic tale of love lost, from beginning to end.
“It’s hard to deal with the pain of losing you everywhere I go / But I’m doing it,” Rascal Flatts sing. “It’s hard to force that smile when I see our old friends / And I’m alone / Still harder gettin’ up, gettin’ dressed, living with this regret / But I know if I could do it over / I would trade, give away all the words that I saved in my heart / That I left unspoken.”
“The song was originally inspired by losing my father,” Steele says (via Songfacts). “But I ended up changing the meaning and I made it more of a love song, to be more universal.”
3″I Drive Your Truck” by Lee Brice
Not every heartbreaking song in country music is about a romantic loss. Lee Brice’s 2012 hit, “I Drive Your Truck,” is likely one of the most gut-wrenching songs in country music—about a sibling losing a brother.
“I Drive Your Truck” says in part, “Mama asked me this mornin’ if I’d been by your grave / But that flag and stone ain’t where I feel you anyway / 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.”
Jessi Alexander, Connie Harrington, and Jimmy Yeary are the writers behind “I Drive Your Truck”. Tragically, the song is based on a true story.
“It was a radio interview on NPR,” Harrington tells The Tennessean. “I was in the car. This was Memorial Day, and a gentleman named Paul Monti came on the air. They were interviewing him about losing his son in Afghanistan. … [They were] asking him how he coped with the loss of his son, and he said that he drove his truck, and began to describe it.”
Photo Credit: Taylor Hill/WireImage
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