Some of the best songs are often born from the hardest times. With the ability to translate loss and heartache better than most, they strike a chord with listeners, tugging on their heartstrings and leaving them wanting more. Morgan Evans has crafted such a song with his 2022 hit, “Over For You,” a gut-wrenching tune about the dissolution of love with lyrics just as wounding as they are wounded. The country star on the rise takes American Songwriter behind his broken-hearted hit.
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The Writing Session
“It came from a pretty dark time as you can probably tell,” he tells American Songwriter. “I went through a divorce last year (Evans was married to country singer Kelsea Ballerini) and while that was going down, there was a three-month period where I didn’t really write any music. The first time I sat down to write music after that was the session that ‘Over For You’ came out of.”
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In that session, Evans went in to write alongside Jeff Warburton, Tim Sommers, and Madison Love. “I walked into the room,” he recalls, “and I sat in the corner and I said, ‘I just need to tell you guys what’s going on in my life because if we try to write something else, I’ll be useless.’”
What poured out of the Australian singer-songwriter was the framework of “Over For You.” “I just communicated what I was going through and that’s what ended up being the song,” he says.
Heartbreaking Lyrics
The song opens with a lot of questions, illustrating the confusion that comes with heartbreak against distant keys and soft strings. How long have you been waiting / To take our pictures down / How long have you been breaking / Why am I just finding out, the first verse asks. It kills me to know / You were drifting alone / You don’t have to stay, no / But can I say before you go…
The chorus is the kicker, professing a love that is now one-sided. I would have searched the whole world over for you, Evans sings. Took a flight, through the night / To be that shoulder for you, and I would’ve let go if you wanted me to / How many times did you say you loved me / When it wasn’t true / I’m just wondering / How long has it been over for you?
How long, how long, how long, how long, the song painfully echoes into the next verse.
What do you tell your parents / What do you tell yourself / Was it something I was missing / Or is there someone else, the song begs for answers. It kills me to know / This house ain’t a home / And you don’t wanna stay, no / But can I say before you go…
The chorus plays again and cuts even deeper the second time around.
It would be easier if I hated you, he admits. But I still miss the person / That I thought I knew / I would’ve let go if you wanted me to / How many times did you say you loved me / When it wasn’t true…
“Over For You” asks a lot of questions that never really get answers in the end. “What I’ve learned … is that it’s just so common to have questions like that going through a big breakup,” Evans says of his own experience and he’s okay with not having those answers. “If there’s any takeaway,” he explains, “it’s that no one has all their questions answered and you need to just be okay in the discomfort of that.”
Getting Clarity
“It was a really heavy day,” Evans says of being in the writer’s room the day “Over For You” came to be. But it was worth it. “There’s something about the clarity that came out in that song that I didn’t have in my life at the time.
“More and more as I write songs, I feel like it’s less about the lyric or the melody or the sound of it and just the communication of a feeling and that was the priority,” he adds. “I feel like every line in [‘Over For You’] was trying the communicate the feeling as honestly as possible.” Evans communicated a difficult moment into a song that has since touched so many.
After releasing the song, Evans found that what he was feeling was universal. Fans everywhere were thanking him for writing the song, telling him how much it meant to them. “It’s so different to ‘I love that song’ or ‘It’s just a banger,’” he says of the reception from listeners.
Because of “Over For You,” a song born from so much pain and confusion, Evans has been able to connect with his fans on a deeper level and in a more individual sense.
The Music Video
The song’s simple, yet effective music video features an aimless Evans wandering empty streets and sunrise beaches searching for answers. A ghost in dimly lit hotel rooms and a shadow up on stage, Evans brings the full power of the song in its visual.
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Filmed while on tour in Australia and New Zealand, the video was an impromptu project. A video crew was already around filming the live shows, so Evans opted to make a visual in between shows. “I just said, ‘Look, we’re in the middle of it right now. Let’s make the video right now,’” he recalls, detailing the spontaneity of the whole process. “The whole thing felt very authentic in that way. There was no sort of engineering to make it happen.
“It is simple, but the song is simple,” he adds of the video. “I feel like all of it is simple and I feel like that’s maybe the hardest thing to do creatively is to make simple things that say a lot.”
Photo by Chady Awad / Warner Music
