On This Day in 1975, Tammy Wynette Stepped Into the Studio to Record What She Called the Most Important Song of Her Career

On this day in (December 15) in 1975, Tammy Wynette stepped into Columbia Recording Studio in Nashville and recorded “’Til I Can Make It on My Own.” The song came at a pivotal moment in her life. As a result, she would later say it was her favorite song she ever wrote or recorded. Further, she called it the most important song in her discography.

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Wynette co-wrote “’Til I Can Make It on My Own” with her producer, Billy Sherrill, and future husband George Richey. She released it as a single in January 1976. Later that year, it reached the top of the Hot Country Songs chart. More importantly, it became one of her signature songs and a staple of her concerts. She would later say it was her favorite song she’d ever written or recorded.

[RELATED: On This Day in 1968, Tammy Wynette Topped the Chart With a Song She Had To Defend for the Rest of Her Life]

The song is from the perspective of someone who is healing after the end of a relationship. That was a feeling Wynette knew all too well. Only a few months before writing the song, she and George Jones went through a public divorce. He was her third husband. At the time, she was trying to find her path forward in both her personal and professional lives.

Tammy Wynette Discusses Her Favorite Song

Tammy Wynette loved “’Til I Can Make It on My Own.” However, she wasn’t so fond of the song just because she thought it was well-written and recorded. Instead, the song’s message and its impact on her and others led her to call it her favorite and most important song.

She discussed what the single meant to her during a 1993 appearance on Crook & Chase. “I think ‘Til I Can Make It on My Own’ would be the most important, to me,” she said. “At the time I wrote that song with Richey and Billy, I was on my own for the first time in many, many years. I didn’t think that–as a performer, much less as a person–that I could make it on my own,” she recalled.

“I don’t think that you can write a song–just manufacture a song–and put it across to someone and make them feel that you’ve really been there unless you have. I just think you have to experience things. That’s the only way I can write,” Wynette explained. “Just to manufacture something, I couldn’t do it. I have to have lived it, which is crazy in a way,” she added.

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