Today’s song is ‘I Don’t Need You’. This was a song written by Rick Christian and recorded by American country music artist Kenny Rogers. It was released in June 1981 as the lead single from Rogers’ album ‘Share Your Love’.
The song was first recorded and released as a single in 1978 by Rick Christian himself (the song's writer) at Shoe Productions, a recording studio/production company in Memphis, but it failed to chart. Harry Nilsson recorded it in 1979 and released it on his album in 1980, but he did not release it as a single. Madeleine Marks also recorded it for her self-titled album in early 1981 but did not release it as a single.
After some collaboration with Lionel Richie in 1980 with the song ‘Lady’, and the success of that record, Rogers asked Richie to produce his next album, ‘Share Your Love’. Although the original plan was for Richie to write all the songs for Rogers' forthcoming album, the two men agreed to accept songs they both liked for the project which had been written by others. ‘I Don't Need You’, written by Rick Christian, was one of those songs.
Chosen as the lead single, ‘I Don't Need You’ spent two weeks at Number 3 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart in August 1981. The song also rose to Number 1 on two other Billboard music charts, ‘The Country Chart’ as well as ‘The Adult Contemporary Chart’. It remained atop the latter chart for six weeks in July and August of that year.
Rogers has been quoted describing "I Don't Need You" as " being one of my favourite songs", although he admitted that "I don't think I ever met Rick Christian, the guy who wrote it."
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During my many years working with relationship problems in my capacity as a Probation Officer, counsellor and group worker, whenever I came across a person who had been deeply hurt by the ending of a previous relationship with someone they loved, and who still felt as hurt many years after the relationship ended, I knew I was working with an individual who was falsely telling themselves a lie. I knew that I was working with a person who would never emotionally move on with their life until they stopped deceiving themselves.
The lie which they were repeatedly telling themselves, did not make their pain unreal, but unnecessary! This lie was essentially the irrational belief they held in their mind, and which told their body, ‘I need them’.
When the mind and one’s self-talk constantly tells the body, ‘I need this or that……’, we are invariably instilling inside our body an irrational belief (falsehood) that will harm our health. We have, in short, exaggerated the reality of the circumstances we face with the use of the inaccurate word ‘need’ instead of the word ‘want’. The simple truth remains, that apart from a very few things in life like, water, fresh air, heat, shelter etc, which are necessary to function and live, there is very little one truly ‘NEEDS’ to exist at all.
We can acknowledge our hurt, yet still stay with truth and reality-based functioning, by exchanging the exaggerated and untrue self-talk of ‘we need’ to the accurately based self-talk of ‘we want’ or ‘we desire’ or ‘we like’.
Whenever we tell ourselves that ‘we need…..’ we are more likely to be engaged in irrational and inaccurate self-talk. Whenever we shift our self-talk to ‘we need’ instead of remaining with more truthful and rationally based self-talk, we are instantly entering self-harm territory.
In simple terms, the mind instructs the body how to act and respond. The body cannot respond without first receiving a mental instruction and ‘self-talk’ operates as a mental instruction to one’s body. So, when a person tells their mind they ‘need something/someone’, because the body’s experiences know that ‘needs are things that must be met’, if they are not met, ‘something bad will happen and one’s body will feel bad in consequence’. Telling oneself this irrational belief is one sure way of ensuring that your body acts in a self-destructive way in self-fulfilling prophesy form.
The best thing that anyone with a broken heart can tell oneself (if they truly want to emotionally resolve their bad feelings and move on with their life after an unhappy encounter/relationship) is as the song title indicates. Tell themselves the palpable truth, ‘I Don’t Need You.’ Such a statement is 100% accurate and remains 100% emotionally truthful and 100% rational.
Saying ‘I don’t need you’ does not mean ‘I don’t want you’ or ‘I won’t miss you’ or ‘I wish that our breakup had never happened’ or ‘It has hurt me so deeply’ etc. etc. Staying literally accurate with all our self-talk will enable us to acknowledge the hurt we feel and healthily process the emotional loss and bad feelings we experience. We will be able to emotionally move on, ‘by remaining in the world of reality’ instead of constantly living within an emotionally sad world of ‘what might/would have been’ if only the break-up or hurtful event had never happened.
I dedicate my song today to Bernadette O’Donogue who hails from the land of my birth, Ireland, but who lives in lives in Peterborough. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Bernadette, and I hope you and your family have a lovely day. Bill x
Love and peace Bill xxx