Songfacts®:

• Although this song marked a drastic change in Rik Emmett's career, the Triumph singer/songwriter says he wasn't nervous about it. When we spoke with Rik in 2012, he told us that one of his goals with this song was to "change how people saw and thought of me." He explained that he wrote the song because it's easier for him to write more conventional Pop songs rather than Hard Rock and Heavy Metal songs, such as the ones that Triumph would play.
  
  Rik says progressive bands like Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, and King Crimson influenced his writing in Triumph, but songwriters like James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Jimmy Webb influenced his desire to pursue a solo career. When he left Triumph, Rik wanted to convert people and convince them that he wasn't just some rock 'n' roll guitar player. He told us in 2012 that this song was pretty simple and that he wanted people to hear a wide range of sounds coming from a songwriter when they listened to the Absolutely album. (Here's our full Rik Emmett interview.)
• Rik Emmett told us, "That song is really one of those four-chord kinds of progression songs and I call them laundry list songs." He continued: "You start out with a premise. I had the hook, so what's the sound that a heart makes when a heart breaks? Well, it would be the sound of a flag fluttering at half mast, or it would be the sound of a tear rolling down a cheek and crashing to the ground. And then I had to try and figure out how to make them rhyme and how to fit them into a structure and which ones get thrown in the garbage and which ones do I keep. And the metaphor of an empty house, of a relationship breaking up so that there's a phone ringing, but nobody answers it. Those kinds of images, that's what started to populate the lyric of that song."
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Tony Daniels told Rik Emmett that he needed to get a country artist to do this song. Daniels, who narrated one of Emmett's later albums, constantly tells Emmett that "if Shania Twain did this song, it would be a huge hit."