3 Country Ballads From the 2000s That Aren’t About Breakups

Country music has had some awesome breakup ballads over the years. That doesn’t mean that songwriters can’t write a song about something else, though. Here are a few country songs from the 2000s that aren’t about a breakup.

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“Don’t Blink” by Kenny Chesney

“Don’t Blink” by Kenny Chesney is a song about the passage of time.

This one was written by Chris Wallin and Casey Beatherd. An older man of about 102 years old had had an accident in front of Beatherd’s house before the writing happened, which is where that part of the song comes from.

Wallin told The Tennessean, “So we started talking about that, how time is short. I was telling him about all of the people that I’d lost … while we were writing it, we were going back and forth on how old the old man was. We were trying to decide whether 102 years old was too old.”

Ultimately, they decided it wasn’t. “Don’t Blink” is the song that came about as a result.

“Letters From Home” by John Michael Montgomery

Montgomery’s “Letters From Home” explores a soldier’s relationships with his loved ones back home through a series of letters. The first is a letter from the soldier’s mother, the next is from his fiancée, and lastly from his dad, who tells the soldier that he’s proud of him.

I hold it up and show my buddies
Like we ain’t scared and our boots ain’t muddy
But no one laughs
‘Cause there ain’t nothin’ funny when a soldier cries
And I just wipe my eyes
I fold it up and put in my shirt pick up my gun and get back to work
And it keeps me drivin’ on, waitin’ on
Letters from home.

“Remember When” by Alan Jackson

Similar to Chesney’s ballad, “Remember When” makes you think about how short life really is while giving the listener a snapshot of the narrator’s best memories and moments with his wife. Even though this solo write wasn’t written just for Jackson’s wife, Denise, there are certain similarities between the love story in the song and his own. The singer admitted in a social media post, “Denise and I met as kids, and all that’s true. And most of that is just reflections of our life, and some of it looking ahead.”

Photo by: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for CMA