Nobody Wanted To Help Garth Brooks Write This Song (And It Ended up Being His First No. 1 in 1989)

Sometimes a song needs an extra-special co-writer to help it really come to life. For Garth Brooks, that song was “If Tomorrow Never Comes”, which he wrote with songwriter Kent Blazy. Although the song turned out to be Brooks’ first No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, he revealed in his memoir that at first, none of his other co-writers seemed to believe in the idea. Then he met Kent Blazy, and everything changed.

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“I had passed the song to two or three different songwriters, and they just didn’t get it,” Brooks tells The Anthology: Part 1. “So the first time I sit with Kent, he goes, ‘What’ve you got?’ I said, ‘Well, I got a song nobody likes.’”

Blazy tells a similar story.

“First time I write with [Garth Brooks], I ask him what he’d like to work on, if he’s got any ideas, and he tells me he’s got something no one likes,” the co-writer shares. “Not what you’d expect as an opener when you’re writing with a guy for the first time. But Garth knew there was something there.”

According to Brooks, Blazy was able to do something none of the other co-writers could. Within fifteen seconds of Brooks explaining the idea to Kent, he had a first verse down and the start of what would eventually become Garth Brooks’ “signature song.”

Sometimes, you need somebody who believes in an idea as much as you do to make some magic happen.

What “If Tomorrow Never Comes” Is Really About

As Brooks shares in his memoir, “If Tomorrow Never Comes” is a song about being afraid of regret, and telling people you love how you feel about them before it’s too late. The second verse sums this up perfectly. Garth Brooks sings,

‘Cause I’ve lost loved ones in my life
Who never knew how much I loved them
Now I live with the regret
That my true feelings for them never were revealed
So, I made a promise to myself
To say each day how much she means to me
And avoid that circumstance
Where there’s no second chance to tell her how I feel.

“[The song is] about this guy that wants to make sure his wife knows that if something happens to him, that he did love her. She didn’t have to wonder,” Brooks shares in his memoir.

“And boom, I start working on it with Kent, the first verse was done like that. I never even pick up a guitar.”

Photo by: Bob King/Redferns