This song of cheating and betrayal was the first Sugarland song written entirely by their singer,
Jennifer Nettles. It was a #1 Country hit in the US. The song is about a woman who is having an affair with a married man who keeps promising her that he's going to divorce his wife to be with her. By the end of the song, she realizes that he's not going to honor his words, and she tells him to stay with his wife instead.
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Suggestion credit:
Brooke - Radcliff, KY
This was the most-watched video on CMT.com in 2007. In an interview with CMT (Country Music Television), Nettles explained that she wrote the song in 2003, and it was inspired by Reba McEntire's "Whoever's in New England," which is from the perspective of a wife whose husband is cheating on her. Nettles wanted to write from the perspective of the two people doing the cheating. Said Nettles: "Even though the person who is cheating might think he or she is getting away with something, they know they aren't living their highest truth, and they wouldn't be in the situation if they were just happy-go-lucky in the first place. Nobody is happy in this situation."
This was a very emotional song for Nettles, and it came together quickly. She told CMT: "It was just in a couple of sittings on my couch," she explains. "And once the first line came, 'I've been sitting here staring at the clock on the wall. I've been laying here, praying she won't call,' the story just unfolded."
The other member of Sugarland is Kristian Bush, and although he and Nettles are very close, they insist it is like a brother-sister relationship and that this song is not autobiographical.
This won the Song of the Year award at the 2008 ACM awards, marking the first time a female artist had ever held solo writing credit on an ACM Song of the Year winner. It also was the Fan's Choice for Song of the Year.
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At the 2009 Grammy Awards, this won for Best County Duo/Group Performance with Vocals. Sugarland performed the song at the ceremony.
Kristian Bush tells us that Nettles didn't have much confidence in this song. "She squirreled it away, like she didn't think it was very good," he said. Once he convinced her to let him hear the song, she played it for Bush and he loved it. The song became the first Sugarland track that was written by just one member. "It was kind of fun," Kristian said. "She's a great writer, and people didn't really know that, they just associated her with singing, because they didn't really know her previous career. It was fun to help her redefine that for herself."
The duo tried recording what Kristian Bush calls a "Black Crowes version" of this song, and then a version with an orchestra and a huge chorus before deciding that the song worked best with just the two of them performing on the track in a simple arrangement.
"I kept trying to make it work, and it just wasn't as good as what happened when the two of us just sat down and played it," Bush told us. "Pretty soon we were like, Okay, forget it. Let's just the two of us play it. I said, 'Well, if we do this, it might never go on the radio, because radio will probably never take an acoustic song that's five minutes long.'
But we decided that you serve the song, you don't serve the radio. And sure enough, as fate has it, they ended up playing it on the radio and it was a big old hit song."