No Such Thing as a Broken Heart

Album: Happy Endings (2017)
Charted: 46
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single from Old Dominion's sophomore album is a mid tempo reflection on living life to the fullest even though it's not always going to be perfect.

    You know you can't keep the ground from shaking
    No matter how hard you try
    You can't keep the sunsets from fading
    You gotta treat your life like you're jumping off a rope swing


    "No matter who you are, where you live or your current status, people both old and young face more challenges than ever," frontman Matthew Ramsey said. "It's in the face of those challenges and standing at the edge of fear that we have to remain positive. Focus on the light that comes from positivity instead of being swallowed up. Work hard at doing what you feel is right. Don't be scared!! Live life like there's no such thing as a broken heart."
  • The song opens with a nod to John Mellencamp (then John Cougar)'s 1982 hit "Jack & Diane":

    I wonder if Jack and Diane ever made it
    After the drums and guitars all faded
    Was the best they could do good enough
    Or did the Heartland just swallow them up?
  • The track was released on March 10, 2017. The band had been playing the song live since the previous year's fall.
  • The track was written during an informal session in the back of the band's bus. Ramsey told Taste of Country: "One of my favorite things about this song is that there was no idea that day. We were just kind of talking, and we had a little groove going, and I said, 'I wonder if Jack and Diane ever made it.' And we all just kinda perked up and thought, 'Man, what does that even mean?' And we just kinda started writing this song, with no real direction."
  • Ramsey and the other writers penned the tune soon after the shootings in Orlando in 2016, and while the writers weren't consciously writing about that tragedy, it seeps into the lyrics. "It is something that we were feeling. It's a hard thing to watch on TV, just the state of everything right now, and the news and everything, it can really weigh on you," Ramsey reflected. "We didn't set out to do that, to be some sort of messenger. It really was just what we were feeling that day."
  • The song's music video, directed by Steve Condon, is a play on the 1980s video games of the band members' childhoods, such as Duck Hunt. The clip follows Old Dominion through a retro video game-animated world, as they romp through real-life scenarios using their super powers to earn pixelated power boosts and bonus points.

    "We always want to do something a little unexpected. [But] we couldn't come up with much for this one. Everything seemed so serious," Matthew Ramsey told Entertainment Weekly. Then, Condon pitched the idea of visually interpreting every line in the song, "[and] from there, he just went nuts!"
  • The song set the tone for the entire recording of the Happy Endings album. Matthew Ramsey recalled to Artist Direct:

    "It was a moment where we'd been playing the song in rehearsal and we played it live a few times. When we got into the studio we realized pretty quickly that that wasn't coming across as well as it could, so it became about really digging in and pulling out all the best little hokey parts that we could and really building and creating something interesting from front to back. I think that's the way we approached every song once we recorded 'No Such Thing As a Broken Heart', and to realize that we didn't have to stick to exactly what we've been practicing, and we can kind of loosen up a little bit and really showcase our songwriting as best we could."

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