4 Country Songs From the 2000s That Wrote the Book on Sad Songwriting

Nothing will make you cry like 2000s country. Here are a few songs that make other sad country songs look like child’s play.

“Travelin’ Soldier” by The Dixie Chicks

This song is about as gut-wrenching as it gets. Not to mention, the attention to detail and the storytelling in “Travelin’ Soldier” is insane. From the beginning, the song’s tragic tone kind of insinuates what’s going to happen, but when you get to the end, the song always hits like it’s the first time you’re hearing it.

“Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum

Yeah, this one hits every time. “Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum not only sings of heartbreak, but also of a certain kind of desperation that only comes when you truly love and lose.

As The Boot reports, this heartbreak anthem was actually the second of two songs written when Lady Antebellum combined forces with songwriter Josh Kear.

“We already had another song halfway done, so we finished that first,” Charles Kelley shared. “Then Josh asked what else we had. So we actually wrote two songs that day. I’d been fooling around with this little guitar melody at home and had that first line, ‘Picture-perfect memories scattered all around the floor.‘ But I didn’t have a chorus melody. I played what I had for Josh, and everybody liked it, so we just started writing.”

“What Hurts The Most” by Rascal Flatts

This Rascal Flatts hit was originally written by songwriters Jeffrey Steele and Steve Robinson. It’s a classic breakup song, but the chorus is more memorable than most and just overall really heartbreaking. Perhaps this is because the tune wasn’t actually inspired by a romantic loss at first.

“The song was originally inspired by losing my father,” Steele explained, as reported by SongFacts. “But I ended up changing the meaning, and I made it more of a love song to be more universal.”

“Just A Dream” by Carrie Underwood

I don’t know what it was about 2000s country and soldier songs, but similar to the way that “Travelin’ Soldier” does, this one pulls at the heartstrings.

“Just A Dream” sings of a romance that could’ve been. Underwood narrates the tragic tale of a young wife who loses her soldier husband and tries to cope with the loss by sitting in denial. Per usual, the combination of Underwood’s vocal chops telling a tragic story is enough to get the waterworks going for anybody.

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