My song today is ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’. This song was recorded by American country music artist, George Jones. It has been named in several surveys as being ‘the greatest country song of all time’. It was released in April 1980 as the lead single from the album ‘I Am What I Am’. The song was Jones's first solo Number 1 single in six years.
The melancholy song was written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman. The week after Jones' death, the song re-entered the ‘Hot Country Songs’ chart at Number 21. Since 2008 the song has been preserved by the ‘Library of Congress’ into the ‘National Recording Registry’. The song was Number 275 on Rolling Stone’s list of the ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’. The Country singer and friend, Alan Jackson, sang the song during George Jones' funeral service on May 2, 2013. George Strait and Jackson sang the song as a tribute during the 2013 CMA Awards on November 6, 2013.
By 1980, Jones had not had a Number 1 single in six years and many critics began to write him off. However, the music industry was stunned in July when ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ shot to Number 1 on the country charts. The song tells the story of a friend who has never given up on his love; he keeps old letters and photos from back in the day and hangs on to hope that she would ‘come back again’. The song reaches its peak in the chorus, revealing that he indeed stopped loving her when he died, and the woman does return to see him for one last time, as she views his smiling face in his open funeral casket.
Initially, when introduced to the song in 1978 by producer Billy Sherrill, George Jones hated the song when he first heard it. In Bob Allen's biography of the singer, Sherrill states, "He thought it was too long, too sad, too depressing and that nobody would ever play it. He hated the melody and he initially refused to learn it."
The success of ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ led CBS Records to renew Jones' recording contract and sparked new interest in the singer. Jones earned the ‘Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance’ in 1980. The ‘Academy of Country Music’ awarded the song ‘Single of the Year’ and ‘Song of the Year’ in 1980. It also became the ‘Country Music Association’s Song of The Year’ in both 1980 and 1981. The song became so synonymous with Jones that few singers dared to cover it.
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The story content of the song’s lyrics is indeed sad, and while I have not known of a similar situation where a woman stopped loving a man and refused to see him again until she saw him in his funeral casket, I am sure that it must have happened a number of times.
I have heard of something similar once happening, but the tale being told was after a night out drinking, so I cannot testify to its veracity, especially as the storyteller was six sheets to the wind as he spun his yarn, besides being well known as being a bit of a ‘tall storyteller’ where truth was concerned. He told his tales more for the attention of his audience than any accuracy to detail.
When asked by one of the party, “Why would a woman who had left a man twenty years earlier, and had refused to go back to him in between, than be eager to see him in his open coffin?” the inebriated person telling the tale simply replied, “Curiosity, I suppose, curiosity!” before going on to surmise, “ She might have taken out a life insurance policy on him and wanted to satisfy herself he was dead and that she’d get paid out!”
Love and peace Bill xxx