Love Can Go to Hell

Album: Big Day in a Small Town (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Brandy Clark sings here about the numerous ways that a relationship can fall apart. She penned the song with songwriter Scott Stepakoff (Kip Moore's "Mary Was the Marrying Kind," Tim McGraw's "It's Your World"). She told the story of the song to Radio.com:

    "That was just a title I had, 'Love Can Go to Hell.' And I meant it like it can fall apart, like hell in a handbasket. And I took that in to write with a guy I write a lot, Scott Stepakoff. And he heard it completely different, like 'love can go to hell,' like you're mad at love [itself]. And so that was really amazing, 'cause I hadn't thought of all the ways that it could mean a little something different."
  • Brandy Clark recalled producer Jay Joyce's contribution to the song. "'Love Can Go to Hell' felt way more like a ballad when it was a demo and he heard something in it that I'd never heard, and that [co-writer] Scott Stepakoff had never heard," she told American Songwriter. "He gave it a different energy that really makes it move and took it from a song that we were maybe going to do to a song that became a centerpiece of the record."

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