A Better Man

Album: Killin' Time (1989)
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Songfacts®:

  • Clint Black was nursing a broken heart during the songwriting sessions for his 1989 debut album, Killin' Time, after the demise of a seven-year relationship. "We were friends first, for years, before we ever started datin'," Black explained in The Billboard Book of #1 Country Hits, "and I'd like to think we still are friends. I just knew the relationship wasn't gonna work." Once his guitarist Hayden Nicholas brought him the musical idea, Black wrote the lyrics to "A Better Man," a ballad about how even broken relationships can shape us into better people.

    "The words rolled off my tongue - 'I'm leavin' here a better man, For knowin' you this way…' He knew what I was goin' through at the time, and nothin' more needed to be said. We sat down and started workin' on it."
  • "A Better Man" went to #1 on the country chart, making Black the first artist to reach the apex with their first charted single since Freddy Fender did so with "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" in 1975.

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