On this day (September 14) in 1958, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman was born in Harlingen, Texas. Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016, she has penned a diverse array of hits, including Faith Hill’s crossover smash “This Kiss” and Willie Nelson’s “Nothing I Can Do About It Now”. Today we’re taking a look at the life and career of a true songwriter’s songwriter.
The Making of a Songwriter
The third of five children born to a U.S. Air Force officer and a registered nurse, Beth Nielsen Chapman taught herself how to play guitar and piano while her family was stationed in Munich, Germany. Her early musical influences included Hoagy Carmichael, Tony Bennett, James Taylor, and Carole King.
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In 1969, Chapman’s family settled into Montgomery, Alabama, at the height of the Vietnam War and U.S. civil rights conflicts. These events no doubt left their mark on the budding songwriter.
“With the Vietnam war blazing, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death still fresh in the news, and my heart reeling from the shock of a school trip to Dachau, the bubble of my childhood’s view of the world burst and I started to sense the existential depth of human suffering for the first time,” she said.
In 1976, Chapman joined local pop-rock group, Harmony, replacing Tommy Shaw after he left to join Styx. Four years later, she released her freshman album, Hearing It First, which she recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals.
Unfortunately for Chapman, her debut coincided with the rise of disco music, and the album flopped. Disappointed, she stepped back from songwriting for a several years.
The Move to Nashville
In 1984, Beth Nielsen Chapman moved to Nashville from Mobile, Alabama, with her husband Ernest and their four-year-old son. She did so at the urging of both Ernest and the Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnson, who approached her after a local performance to play another song she wrote.
Her first number-one hit arrived four years later with Tanya Tucker’s “Strong Enough to Bend”, which she co-wrote with Don Schlitz.
Chapman continued recording as her songwriting career took off, landing on the Billboard adult contemporary charts with songs like “I Keep Coming Back to You”, “Walk My Way”, and “All I Have”.
How Songwriting Lifted Beth Nielsen Chapman Out of Grief
If the old adage that the best art is born from pain is true, Beth Nielsen Chapman is a prime example.
She lost her first husband, Ernest Chapman, to cancer in 1994 — a fate she would suffer again more than 20 years later after her second husband, Bob Sherman, died from leukemia in December 2022.
Chapman also battled breast cancer herself in 2000.
“I sort of write my way through my grief, joy and feelings,” she said in a 2014 interview with Lonesome Highway. “Even if not one of those songs ever went out the door, the writing of them has already had a value to me. Add in that a song can then go off into the world and lift someone else who hears it later and there’s the gift.”
[RELATED: The Regretful Meaning Behind Willie Nelson’s 1989 No. 1 “Nothing I Can Do About It Now”]
One of the songs she wrote in the wake of Ernest’s death, “Sand and Water”, made its way to Elton John, who performed it on his 1997 world tour.
Featured image by R. Diamond/Getty Images
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