When Someone Stops Loving You

Album: The Breaker (2017)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This mournful acoustic guitar-based waltz is about the shattering pain resulting from a love gone wrong. However, instead of focusing on the heartbreak the song talks about how the world is still spinning, while you are struggling to get through the day.

    When someone stops loving you
    It don't make the evening news
    It don't keep the sun from rising, clock from winding, heart from beating
    Even when you want it to
    When someone stops loving you


    Despite the fact that everything seems to stop for the person experiencing the end of a relationship, everyone else is carrying on just like nothing has changed.
  • Jimi Westbrook takes the lead vocal, one of three The Breaker tracks where he is the main singer. The others are "Night on Our Side" and "Rollin.'"
  • The song was written by Hillary Lindsey, Lori McKenna and Chase McGill, two-thirds of the writing team that created Little Big Town's smash hit "Girl Crush."

    "We love the song," Karen Fairchild told reporters. "It was [recorded] probably towards the last third of the record that we made with Jay Joyce. We do like a good 6/8 country ballad. It's nice to hear Jimi step out there, and it's such a beautiful lyric."
  • It was the lyrical content, as much as the melody, that compelled Little Big Town to record the song for The Breaker. "I love the kind of everydayman's poetry that's in that song," Fairchild explained. "It's like, we've all felt that, and I love that it says, 'It don't make the evening news.' I think when we heard the demo of them singing it when they wrote it, they were like, 'Everybody else's life goes on, and you're back there in pain.' This song says that really well."

Comments: 1

  • Pam Lawhon from Mystic CtJimi’s voice is perfection, especially in this song!
see more comments

Editor's Picks

Facebook, Bromance and Email - The First Songs To Use New Words

Facebook, Bromance and Email - The First Songs To Use New WordsSong Writing

Where words like "email," "thirsty," "Twitter" and "gangsta" first showed up in songs, and which songs popularized them.

Stand By Me: The Perfect Song-Movie Combination

Stand By Me: The Perfect Song-Movie CombinationSong Writing

In 1986, a Stephen King novella was made into a movie, with a classic song serving as title, soundtrack and tone.

Adele

AdeleFact or Fiction

Despite her reticent personality, Adele's life and music are filled with intrigue. See if you can spot the true tales.

Ian Anderson: "The delight in making music is that you don't have a formula"

Ian Anderson: "The delight in making music is that you don't have a formula"Songwriter Interviews

Ian talks about his 3 or 4 blatant attempts to write a pop song, and also the ones he most connected with, including "Locomotive Breath."

John Lee Hooker

John Lee HookerSongwriter Interviews

Into the vaults for Bruce Pollock's 1984 conversation with the esteemed bluesman. Hooker talks about transforming a Tony Bennett classic and why you don't have to be sad and lonely to write the blues.

Al Jourgensen of Ministry

Al Jourgensen of MinistrySongwriter Interviews

In the name of song explanation, Al talks about scoring heroin for William Burroughs, and that's not even the most shocking story in this one.