Hard on a Heart

Album: Sparrow (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Ashley Monroe lost her father to cancer when she was 13. For a long time the young teen and her mother struggled to find their new roles together following their loss. Those old emotions began to surface when Monroe was working on Sparrow and many of the songs on the record were written as a way of dealing with her anxieties. Here, Monroe talks about one of the physical manifestations she was experiencing as she worked through her childhood trauma.

    "My heart beats too fast. It has ever since -- I guess since Daddy died and all that,' she told The Boot. "I went to the doctor, and they did chest X-rays and all these tests, and they were like, "Your heart's healthy. I don't know why this is happening, but maybe it's anxiety."

    Later, during a therapy session, it was suggested to Monroe that she should address her heart and ask it why its changing on her. "So, when I got back, I wrote that song, and I wrote it really slow - really slow," Monroe said. "But every time I sing that song, my heart, like, triples in speed. I feel it; it's a lot of emotion!"
  • When they came to record the song, Monroe's producer Dave Cobb wanted to speed it up, but the singer protested, saying she wanted to keep it slow. Monroe said: "It actually really grew on me, the way we recorded it, because it does have a heartbeat groove to it, and it sounds more like what my heart sounds like: faster."

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