Album: single release only (2020)
Charted: 26
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by Nicolle Galyon, Ben Johnson and Niko Moon, this song finds Dierks Bentley tuning out of life after a rough breakup.
  • I've been gone, I've been gone
    I've been sittin' on the couch watching TV all day long
    All day long, I've been tryin' to figure out how a good thing went wrong


    Recorded by Bentley amid the turmoil of the cornavirus pandemic, he connected to the song not only in the way it portrays the effects of a failed relationship but also to how he's feeling in 2020. He explained to the media that the disarray following the broken romance doubles as a metaphor for the lockdown keeping touring musicians "gone" from their fans.

    "I feel like I've been gone. I feel like we've all been gone," Bentley reflected. "So it touches on a little bit of the idea of what's been going on here with COVID, but it does in a metaphorical way, through a relationship. I don't think anybody wants to hear anything written too directly about what's happening right now, it'd be too depressing."
  • Frequent Carrie Underwood collaborator David Garcia produced the track. Theirs is a new partnership - Bentley and Garcia only met earlier in 2020 over Zoom while writing songs with Hardy. Ross Copperman had been Bentley's main producer on his last three albums.
  • Sonically, the song combines modern sounds with Bentley's roots as a bluegrass fan. Garcia's layering of dobro, piano and guitar with an aching groove and a gritty vocal is fresh territory for the singer. "I love the sounds of the old-school stuff, the acoustic stuff, but I listen to country radio and I hear these kids putting stuff out - I'm like, 'I like those sounds too.' Those loops sound fun, and that sounds cool, and that lyric's really catchy," Bentley shared.
  • The song's music video was shot in Nashville in November 2020 and directed by Wes Edwards, Ed Pryor, Travis Nicholson, Running Bear and Sam Siske with animation by Skylar Wilson.

    The clip finds Bentley lying on a seedy hotel bed flipping through the vintage TV. However, every channel he turns to reveals classic shows starring him as the main character. "It just always ends poorly for me in this video," said Bentley. "I definitely had a lot more fun making it than it looks though... we got to film a bunch of scenes inspired by some of my favorite shows like The Office, MacGyver, Game Of Thrones and Full House. And I got to collaborate with some new directors I've never worked with, so I left at the end of a really long day feeling really happy and inspired about a kind of sad song."

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