Garth Brooks might have never become a country music superstar if not for this one song. “If Tomorrow Never Comes“, Brooks’ second single and first No. 1 hit, changed literally everything for him.
Videos by American Songwriter
Written by Brooks and Kent Blazy, their biggest hope, at least at the time, was to have another artist record the song.
“We pitched it around town for about a year, and nobody was interested,” Blazy recalls (via Songfacts). “We were going to get together and rewrite it, to see if we could get it better. About a week before that, [Brooks] got a call to come play at the Bluebird to fill in for somebody who was sick. They let him do one song, and he played ‘If Tomorrow Never Comes.’”
When Brooks performed at the Bluebird, he had already been turned down by a record label multiple times, giving him little hope he would have a career as an artist.
“Linda Schultz from Capitol Records, who passed on him for the third time that week, heard something,” Blazy recounts. “She said, ‘Why don’t you come back? Maybe we missed something.’ He came in and got a record deal. It was his second single, my first No. 1, and his first No. 1.”
What Garth Brooks Says About “If Tomorrow Never Comes”
Brooks might have been relatively new to songwriting at the time. But even he had a feeling there was something special about “If Tomorrow Never Comes”.
“I thought we had something when we completed the song,” Brooks concedes. “But I didn’t really know it would be a hit until I heard it by chance on the radio in my truck, and I knew we had something. There was something in it that moved me, and I could feel the tears come to my eyes.”
“If Tomorrow Never Comes” says, “If tomorrow never comes / Will she know how much I loved her / Did I try in every way to show her every day / That she’s my only one? / And if my time on Earth were through / And she must face this world without me / Is the love I gave her in the past gonna be enough to last / If tomorrow never comes?”
Brooks had the idea for the song, but no one wanted to write it with him until Blazy.
’If Tomorrow Never Comes’ will probably always be my signature song,” Brooks says. “I ran the idea for this song by what seemed like a thousand writers, and no one really seemed to understand what I was looking for. On the day that Bob Doyle, my co-manager, introduced me to Kent Blazy, I passed this idea by Kent, and he had the first verse within fifteen seconds. I could tell he just felt it,”
“If Tomorrow Never Comes” earned Brooks his first Single of the Year and Song of the Year nominations at the CMA Awards.
Photo by Beth Gwinn/Getty Images
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.