Songfacts®:

• In "Fool Hearted Memory," George Strait plays a guy who can't get the girl who left him out of his mind despite his best efforts to drink away the memory. It's one of his earliest songs, released as the first single from his second album, Strait From The Heart, in 1982. It became his first #1 Country hit, starting a remarkable run of 44 chart-toppers across three decades, a record that is likely to stand.
• Strait sings this song in a 1982 movie called The Soldier, his first appearance in a film. The movie was panned by critics, but the scene Strait appears in is rather entertaining. He performs the song in a honky-tonk bar as a fight breaks out, complete with pool cues, beer bottles, and guys getting tossed into the mud-wresting pit. Despite the mayhem, Strait and his band just keep playing.
• The Nashville songwriter Byron Hill wrote this song with Blake Mevis, who also produced it. According to Hill, it was written for a 1980 movie called The Exterminator, but wasn't chosen for the film. "The same company came to my publisher and wanted a song for The Soldier," Hill recalled to Country Weekly. "But there was more to it. The studio wanted a major label artist to record the song and perform it in the movie. And they would only commit to the song if it was released as a single."
• According to the song's co-writer Blake Mevis, the song started with the title, which he had in his head for a while before writing it with Byron Hill. Once they got going, the song took them about 20 minutes to write.
• George Strait was 30 years old when this song went to #1 on the Country chart in 1982. It took him a while to land a record deal - he almost took a job building barns in his home state of Texas instead of pushing ahead with music, but his wife Norma convinced him to stick with it. He signed with MCA in 1981 and had a few solid hits from his debut album, released that year, including "Unwound" and "If You're Thinking You Want a Stranger (There's One Coming Home)." But it was his second album, Strait From The Heart, that brought him to the top tier. Along with "Fool Hearted Memory," the album also includes Strait's cover of "Amarillo By Morning," which became his signature song.
  
  Oh, and his wife Norma - he married her in 1971 and they're still together. Strait didn't live through all those tear-jerking moments he sings about.