With Him

Album: Stories of Our Lives Vol. 1 (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • In the late '70s, Bruce Sudano was in a band called Brooklyn Dreams, which ended up on the same label as Donna Summer. Sudano and Summer hit it off, and in 1980, they got married, a union that lasted until her death in 2012.

    Sudano put a lot of his musical energy into coping with Summer's death. In the process, he grew as a songwriter and a person, leading to his Stories of Our Lives EP in 2019. The first single is "With Him," where he sings from the perspective of a guy who has been left for another. In a Songfacts interview, Sudano talked about the meaning and inspiration behind the song: "This is a song about a couple who were together for 17 years. They happen to be a gay couple, and it's a breakup of a longtime relationship. It's a different kind of breakup when you're with somebody for a long time because you have a level of a whole world breaking down and then building yourself up. And the thing about this song is that the person who is being left realizes that even if you want to come back, I can't take you back because your heart isn't mine anymore, your heart is with him. So, I don't want to let you go, but I can't take you back because I recognize that your heart is no longer mine, so whatever the pain that I have to suffer, I have no choice and I have to walk through it."
  • Mike Montali of the band Hollis Brown produced this track. The Nashville musician Adam Landry contributed guitar.
  • The video plays out the story in the song, showing a guy devastated after reading his Dear John letter. It was helmed by the Norwegian director Erik Bergamini.

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