“Too Long, Too Sad, Too Depressing”: The Certified Country Tear-Jerker That George Jones Despised Is the Same One That Helped Cement His Legacy

It was 1980, and country singer George Jones hadn’t had a No. 1 hit in six years. His once-illustrious career had fallen victim to his struggles with substance use, and critics were convinced his talent had dried up entirely. Then the native Texan dropped “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” and everything changed. The song rocketed to the top of the country charts, won multiple awards, and brought Jones’ career back from the brink. And no one was more surprised than “Possum” himself, who was convinced early on that “nobody’ll buy that morbid son of a b—-.”

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 “He thought it was too long, too sad, too depressing and that nobody would ever play it,” recalled producer Billy Sherrill in Bob Allen’s 1994 biography of the singer. “He hated the melody and wouldn’t learn it.”

George Jones Struggled Through Recording This Pivotal Hit

Further complicating matters, George Jones was still deep in the throes of addiction when he recorded the track. He also continually kept singing the words to the melody of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” insisting it was “better.”

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♬ Silence – Fe La

“He Stopped Loving Her Today” tells the story of a man whose unrequited love for a woman ends only with his death. The song’s emotional crux lies largely in four spoken lines. “She came to see him one last time/And we all wondered if she would/And it kept running through my mind/This time he’s over her for good.”

“Pretty simple, eh?” Jones wrote in his 1997 book I Lived to Tell It All. “I couldn’t get it. I had been able to sing while drunk all of my life. I’d fooled millions of people. But I could never speak without slurring when drunk. What we needed to complete that song was the narration, but Billy could never catch me sober enough to record four simple spoken lines. It took us about 18 months to record a song that was approximately three-minutes long.”

[RELATED: “He Stopped Loving Her Today” Isn’t the Saddest George Jones Song—and I’ll Tell You Why]

“Back on Top”

Later, even George Jones had to admit “He Stopped Loving Her Today” revived his flailing career. The song’s success prompted CBS Records to renew his recording contract. He also snagged a Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance. Four years later, in Birmingham, Alabama, the country music legend took the stage sober for the first time since the early ’70s.

“To put it simply, I was back on top,” Jones said in his book. “Just that quickly. I don’t want to belabor this comparison, but a four-decade career was salvaged by a three-minute song.”

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