Songfacts®:

• This song is about a couple that are so connected, they don't need words to communicate. Just a look or touch can say it all.
  
  Originally released by the country singer Keith Whitley in 1988, it was written by two leading country songwriters, Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz. The latter also wrote and previously recorded Kenny Rogers' US #1 Country hit "The Gambler."
  
  The title came to the songwriters out of thin air, and they built the rest of the song around it. "That was a day where we just went in the office and tried to just stay there until we came up with something," Overstreet recalled in The Billboard Book Of Number One Country Hits. "It was one of those things where you start messing around with the guitar and humming, and something sparks, you know, 'When You Say Nothing At All.' We just sat down and tried to write a song around it."
  
  "Sometimes actions speak louder than words, as the old saying goes," Schlitz added, "and we just found another way to say that. Sometimes if you listen carefully enough with your eyes, you can hear a whole lot more than you hear with your ears. Keith did a great job singin' that song - he truly sang it from the heart."
• Keith Whitley's original version was a #1 Country hit. He was a big star and on the rise, but in 1989, just a year after releasing the song, he died of alcohol poisoning at age 34.
  
  The song was revived by Alison Krauss in 1994 when she covered it for Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album. Her version proved so popular it was released as a single, this time landing at #3 on the Country chart and also placing on the Hot 100 (#53) and UK singles chart (#81).
  
  In 1999, Ronan Keating, still with the Irish boy band Boyzone, recorded it for the romantic comedy Notting Hill at the suggestion of Richard Curtis, who wrote the screenplay. It plays in a scene where Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts make a love connection.
  
  Released as Keating's first single as a solo artist, his rendition of "When You Say Nothing At All" went to #1 in the UK, jumpstarting his solo career.
• When Notting Hill screenwriter Richard Curtis suggested this song to Keating, he had never heard it before, but he didn't have to. "As soon as he mentioned the title, I was hooked," Keating said.
• This appears on Keith Whitley's 1988 album Don't Close Your Eyes. His previous album, 1985's L.A. To Miami, featured the Schlitz and Overstreet-penned cuts "Nobody In His Right Mind Would Leave Her" and "On the Other Hand," which became #1 Country singles for George Strait and Randy Travis, respectively.
  
  "We always had a runnin' joke that they wanted me to cut another one of their songs and get the first crack at a single on it," Whitley noted in The Billboard Book Of Number One Country Hits. "So we were very happy when I heard 'When You Say Nothing At All.'"
• According to the song's co-writer Paul Overstreet, Keith Whitley was the first artist they pitched for this song. They played it for Whitley's producer, Garth Fundis, who loved the song and brought it to Whitley, who was also very impressed. It became the second of five consecutive US Country #1s for Whitley, the last one posthumous.
• In America and across Europe, this song remains popular at christenings, marriages and funerals, with Keith Whitley or Alisson Krauss' versions usually used in the States and Keating's in Europe.
• In Ronan Keating's version, the line "Old Mr. Webster could never define" is changed to "Try as they may they can never define." That's because in Europe, Webster's Dictionary isn't common, and trying to get "Oxford English Dictionary" into the lyric would be... untenable.
• The song appears on both the Notting Hill soundtrack and on Keating's debut solo album, Ronan. Both albums were certified Platinum in the UK, with Ronan going 4x Platinum for sales in excess of 1.2 million.
• In 2003, Keating recorded a new version with the Mexican singer Paulina Rubio, who sings her lines in Spanish, and another version with the Brazilian singer Deborah Blando, who sings her parts in Portuguese.
  
  In 2020, Keating teamed up with Alison Krauss to duet on a new version released on his album Twenty Twenty.