Already Gone

Album: Love On The Inside (2008)
Charted: 41
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Songfacts®:

  • A waltz-time lope on a Country album is very unusual, but Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush of Sugarland were determined to do a song in six-eight time. In our interview with Bush, he explained: "I was really obsessed at that time with trying to see if we could redefine ourselves, or start a new definition of ourselves as musicians. When we started this band, Jennifer put her guitar down. And I said, 'Well, why don't you find a way to pick it up?' I was really obsessed with the Faces and old Rod Stewart records, so I wanted mandolins and 12-strings - I wanted to write a song that way.

    We started talking about how if you have a song in 6/8 that if you choose to do one, then you've got to punch your card, much like it's Starbucks. You can't do more than one of them, so make it good. We decided, well, this will be the song we write in 6."
  • Kristian Bush tells us that this song is about relationships that have ended emotionally long before they are physically terminated. "It's very much a story," he said. "And it's a story that was close to Jennifer at the time, but was also close to just about everybody we knew, that sometimes when relationships are over, they're over way after the fact - the people have actually left."
  • Nettles and Bush wrote this together with Nashville singer-songwriter Bobby Pinson. The trio also wrote the album's lead single "All I Want to Do" and Sugarland's first Country #1 "Want To" together.

    Bush says that Pinson came up with the crucial section in the third verse: "Pictures, dishes and socks, it's our whole life down to one box."

    Says Bush: "It was this great line in the third verse about all the things that you packed up. It's this moment where, 'All I've got left are the things that fit in this box.' It's just a beautiful moment, and Bobby's great at that."
  • Nettles and Bush were determined to keep personal this healing tale, about a woman who is growing up, leaving home, falling in love and saying goodbye. Nettles explained on the duo's website: "This is the story of coming of age, literally and emotionally."

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