Let Me Down Easy

Album: Find a Light (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • This bittersweet breakup song features backup harmony vocals by Jason Isbell's wife Amanda Shires. The singer-songwriter and violin player has performed as a member of the Texas Playboys, Thrift Store Cowboys and Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, as well as recording solo material. Blackberry Smoke's Charlie Starr explained the choice to add Shires onto the track:

    "I wrote 'Let Me Down Easy' with my old buddy, Keith Nelson," he shared. "We really wanted a cool female voice on it. I thought it would be really cool to have a female harmony on this song, sort of a Gram Parsons-Emmylou Harris kind of thing, and Amanda came to mind. Amanda Shires most definitely has a cool voice. She sings beautifully on it."
  • Billboard commented to Charlie Starr that there seems to be a thematic thread running through Find A Light, of finding hope during hard times. He replied:

    "I think that's why I kinda landed on that title. I looked at the majority of the songs, lyrically, and they seemed to be a little more optimistic than the last album -- I don't know why, in this climate, 'cause it definitely seems more desperate now than ever in my life. But maybe that's it; Maybe what everyone needs is a little more optimism. So, yeah, the title is really a broad stroke, and it just means that it seems like the only way you can find happiness and find the good is to find it yourself. Nobody is gonna do it for you, so you've got to find the light yourself."

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