Songfacts®:

• Born from the wreckage of a broken heart, "Killing the Blues" was written in the mid-1970s by American musician Roly Salley. Since 1985, Salley has held the role of Chris Isaak's bass guitarist.
  
  "It's a song about a personal situation," he told the YouTube channel Musicians on the Record. "There was someone I was with at the time. We had agreed to clean up our act. I did it. She skipped. It was a fork in the road. And I took it."
• This song was used in an advertising campaign for the chain store JC Penney, which features sentimental images of "heartland" Americana, such as family reunions and Fourth of July celebrations.
• Robert Plant recalled to the London Times May 3, 2008: "When I first heard that song, after T. Bone (producer T-Bone Burnett) sent his collection of songs, I was driving through the Welsh borders in Herefordshire. I just stopped the car. It was so poignant, so masterly."
  
  Krauss added in the same interview: "And the melody was so. When you combine a melody that lifts you up with a lyric like that, it's a twisted thing. When you get that combination, that is really something."
• This was #51 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Songs of 2007.