5 Songs You Didn’t Know Vince Gill Wrote for Loretta Lynn, Alabama, Rosanne Cash, and Other Artists

Along with writing songs like “Misery Train,” “Can’t Hold Back” and more across three albums with the Pure Prairie League and later with the Cherry Bombs, alongside Rodney Crowell, earlier in his career, Vince Gill also wrote songs with his wife Amy Grant throughout the decades with “If I Had My Way” (1994), “When I Look Into Your Heart” and “Look What Love’s Revealing” from 2000, and “Threaten Me With Heaven” (2011).

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Gill also collaborated with Patty Loveless, Dolly Parton, Alison Krauss, and more, along with hitting No. 1 with Reba McEntire in 1993 on their duet “The Heart Won’t Lie,” while writing songs for other artists.

In 1992, Mary Chapin Carpenter was the first to record Gill’s “Jenny Dreamed of Trains,” which appeared on Disney’s Country Music for Kids in 1992. Gill later included his version, a tribute to his daughter Jenny, on his 1996 album High Lonesome Sound. He later co-wrote “You Just Get One” for Ty Herndon’s 1995 debut What Mattered Most, which went to the top 10 at No. 9 on the Country chart.

Here’s a look at five songs Gill wrote for other artists from the mid-’80s through the early 2010s.

[RELATED: 4 Songs You Didn’t Know Vince Gill Wrote With Wife Amy Grant]

1. “Never Alone,” Rosanne Cash (1985)

Written by Vince Gill and Rosanne Cash

The country-pop “Never Alone” was first recorded by Rosanne Cash for her fifth album Rhythm & Romance in 1985 before Gill later released his own version of the song on his 1989 album When I Call Your Name. Also the lead single from Cash’s album, “Never Alone” peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart.

You were like a lost kid looking for home
You found what you wanted right in my arms
So if you walk out on me
Just leave your memory
Take my sympathy and go
I love you so
Never alone
Never alone

So if you find another woman turns your head
You can’t understand why it hurts so bad
Then if you walk out on me
Just leave your memory
Take my sympathy and go
I love you so
You’re never alone

2. “Prove Me Wrong,” Crystal Gayle (1988)

Written by Vince Gill and Don Schlitz

When Crystal Gayle was working on her 1988 album Nobody’s Angel, Gill provided backing vocals on two tracks—”Hopeless Romantic” and “Prove Me Wrong.” The latter track, centered around finding a truer love, was one Gill also co-wrote with Don Schlitz.

I’ve had my share of lover
But they always left me cold
You’re so different from the others
You’re the only, I wanna hold

I thought love was like a moonlight
Always fading with the dark
But this might be the one to prove me wrong

[RELATED: 4 Songs Vince Gill Wrote During His Pure Prairie League and Cherry Bombs Days]

3. “Here We Are,” Alabama (1990)

Written by Vince Gill and Beth Nielsen Chapman

On Alabama‘s 13th album Pass It on Down, Gill and Beth Nielsen Chapman, the songwriter behind Faith Hill‘s 1998 hit “This Kiss,” penned one song for the band. The anthemic “Here We Are” was one of several hits on the album and reached No. 2 on the Hot Country Singles chart, joining the other hits, including the title track, which went to No.3, and No. 1s “Down Home,” “Forever’s as Far as I’ll Go,” and “Jukebox in My Mind.”

Here we are, once again
Stronger now than we have ever been
Hand in hand, heart to heart
Now we’ve made it through the hardest part

We had to break it all down
To build it back up
Lean on each other when the times got rough
How’d we survive going through so much?
Baby, you and I could write a book about love

Here we are, one to one
Looking back to see how far we’ve come
We’ve shared it all, you and I
And still together after all this time

4. “Table for Two,” Loretta Lynn (2000)

Written by Vince Gill and Max D. Barnes

By 2000, Loretta Lynn was already 40 years into her career and made sure to remind people that she was Still Country with her 41st album. The album featured Lynn’s own “God’s Country,” along with a cover of John Prine’s “Somewhere Someone’s Falling in Love” and one song co-written by Gill, “Table for Two.”

“As a fellow songwriter, a songwriter of your stature to think enough of one of my songs to record it, you have no idea what it means to me,” Gill told Lynn during a live performance in 2001.

I come here each night
And take at your picture
I sit here and wonder
Just where I went wrong

There is no end in sight
No hope for the future
I miss you allover
Every night that you’re gone

Table for two
Just me and your memory
Between you and me
It’s over and done

5. “Monroe Suede,” Ashley Monroe (2013)

Written by Vince Gill and Ashley Monroe

Along with co-producing Ashley Monroe‘s second album Like a Rose, Gill also co-wrote one of its tracks, “Monroe Suede.” The song was inspired by a writing session with Gill when he handed her Gibson J-200 guitar to help inspire a song.

“He put that [guitar] in my hand, and I said ‘This feels good. This feels right,” said Monroe, who immediately began humming what would become “Monroe Suede” while playing the guitar.

“So we wrote this song, which is about a knucklehead that gets away with a bunch of s–t,” added Monroe, “and we were trying to think of a slick getaway name and came up with ‘Monroe Suede.’”

Momma played piano in a Pentecostal church
Starin’ them snakes in the eye
Daddy died drunk, left us all in a lurch
Hell I did what I did to get by
I did what I did to get by

A third grade education won’t bring you no luck
When you’re looking for a way to get paid
Turned 14 and stole a pickup truck
Couldn’t make it on minimum wage
Couldn’t make it on minimum wage

Well I almost got caught in Tulsa town
I had me one foot in the grave
Ah they’re gonna die trying to track me down
But they’ll never catch Monroe Suede
No they’ll never catch Monroe Suede

Photo: Vince Gill performs onstage at the “37th Annual CMA Awards” at the Grand Ole Opry House November 5, 2003. (Scott Gries/Getty Images)