She’s heartbroken, he’s regretful—and Alabama seemed unstoppable.
Forty-two years ago today, the Country Music Hall of Famers released “Lady Down on Love,” the 11th in what would become a record-setting run of 21 consecutive No. 1 country singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
Released in 1983, the heavy-hearted ballad inspired by an unwanted divorce proved that when Alabama fans spoke, singer Randy Owen listened.
“Lady Down on Love” was the third and final single from Alabama’s album The Closer You Get, and it ascended to No. 1 on Billboard and Radio & Records the second week of October in 1983. Owen wrote the song, splitting the verses between the woman and man in the broken relationship. “Lady Down On Love” opens with the woman’s narrative, sadly surviving the end of her marriage after her husband cheated on her. The second verse belongs to the man, who is sorry and takes accountability, but can’t change his actions.
Lyrics include: But work took me away from home late at night/ And I wasn’t there when she turned out the lights/ Then both of us got lonely and I gave into lust/ And she just couldn’t live with a man she couldn’t trust
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Alabama’s Heartbreak and Accountability
The song sprang from a conversation Owen had with a table of fans in Bowling Green, Kentucky. They were a lively group of 12-to-14 women who weren’t paying much attention to him when he went over to say hi. However, the man who owned the venue encouraged the artists who played there to meet the patrons.
Owen asked the table what brought them out that night – because it clearly wasn’t to hear him sing. One of the women told him they were there celebrating her friend’s divorce. But her friend didn’t look happy.
“She just was just kind of sitting there,” Owen recalled in a writer’s round. “I said, ‘Well, you don’t seem like you’re very happy about that because most of the time when you have a divorce like that, it’s like, ‘I’m proud to get rid of that sucker. I didn’t like him and should have never married him.’”
But this newly single woman didn’t feel that way.
“She said, ‘I’m not really happy. I’d really rather be at home with my husband tonight and be in love,’” she told Owen. “That really, really got me to thinking, it really touched me.”
She Wants to Be Home and In Love
Then she gave Owen another line that became the opening lyrics to “Lady Down On Love.”
“She said, ‘This is the first time I’ve been out since I was 18 years old,’” Owen recalled. “I couldn’t wait to get back to my room that night.”
Owen wrote the song hoping Hispanic country star Johnny Rodriguez would record it, but it never worked out. A few years later, Alabama started trying to record the ballad. Members, including Teddy Gentry and Jeff Cook, attempted, Owen estimated, 20 different ways to get a usable take on the song in the studio. The recording just wouldn’t gel.
The band’s producer, Harold Shedd, told Owen that they’d wait until everyone left the recording studio and try again. Shedd wanted to do two passes through the song with just Owen and his guitar. Then he planned to take the best elements of each take and blend them together.
“That’s what we did,” Owen said. “And we got us a hit.”
“Lady Down on Love”: “We Got Us a Hit”
Thirty years after Alabama released “Lady Down on Love,” Kenny Chesney sang the hit on the band’s 2013 tribute album, Alabama & Friends.
“He sang the hell out of it,” Randy Owen told Billboard. “He’s kind of like my son, and to watch him grow up in the music business and have the success he’s had is a great thing. To have him like a song I wrote enough to sing it is very special to me.”
Since the band’s major label debut in 1980, Alabama has sold more than 80 million albums and charted 43 No. 1 hits. In addition to “Lady Down on Love,” the group’s signature songs include “Mountain Music,” “Roll On,” “Feels So Right,” “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band),” “Dixieland Delight,” “My Home’s In Alabama,” and their first chart-topper “Tennessee River.”
(Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images for Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum)
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