It doesn’t have a chorus, but “Holding Her and Loving You” has quite a hook.
You’re reeled in from the first line of the 1983 song, when Earl Thomas Conley sings, “The third hardest thing I’ll ever do (is) leaving here without you.”
As the song’s co-writer Walt Aldridge explains, once that’s established, a listener says, “What’s number two and number one? I want to hear the countdown.”
We’ll cut to the chase: number one is “Holding her and loving you.” It’s a song about being trapped between two relationships, and the guilt and torment that comes with it.
Aldridge wrote the song with Tommy Brasfield. He recalled that fateful session in a conversation with Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.
“Holding Her and Loving You.” Wow, what a song. It’s one of NSAI’s 50 Songs of the Year. You know, I had forgotten this until we were talking about it earlier — but it’s a song without a chorus.
WA: I was always drawn to some of the older songs that didn’t even have choruses. They just had refrains that happened at the end of a verse. You know, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” ain’t too bad a song. So, I was trying to write a lot of songs that way. I was writing a lot with Tommy Brasfield. At that time, we were writing almost exclusively together…I was determined to write a song that didn’t have a chorus because I felt like it might give us a little bit of an edge in terms of being more unique than what everybody else was pitching.
And numbers are involved in this song.
WA: You know, by default Tommy sort I think just said “It’s the third hardest thing I’ll ever do.” And I said, “Leaving here without you.” So, once you have said what the third hardest thing is, everybody is like, “What’s two and number one? I want to hear the countdown.” So yeah, numbers were involved. You kind of had to go through that. It was a song that I have to say was made exponentially better by the record that Earl Thomas Conley and Nelson Larkin made. What a great record. When you heard Earl sing it, you just felt the pain and felt like, “okay he’s going through this. He’s got to be living this. He wrote this.” It’s one of those deals where he just sold it. When we heard it, I think Tommy and I both knew it was something special.
Well there’s a bittersweet sense of honor in the character of this song.
WA: Well, at least he feels bad about it, you know? He’s not such a scoundrel that he’s trying to hang scalps on his belt. I think everybody, at some point in their life, has been in that uncomfortable situation where you are in a relationship and maybe you’re attracted to somebody else, even if it’s in junior high. You’re having a hard time making up your mind or getting out of one to the other. Transitions are not always clean. Sometimes there’s a little overlapping and that’s what that song is about, trying to navigate those stormy waters.
I guess of all the songs I’ve written, I’ve had more people come up to me and say, “When I heard that song I pulled my car over and cried because I was just living it.” Or (they say), “Man, what an emotional song. I know you had to be going through it.” I’ve had more people connected to it emotionally than anything else.
The song came when I was going through a lot with different relationships. It seemed to always come on in the moment when I needed to go, “Bart…” And it had a profound effect, man. It really does. I know you’ve heard that.
WA: Well, thank you. Obviously that’s why we do what we do: to hopefully have some impact on people or give voice to a feeling that (the listener is) having that maybe they haven’t been able to articulate or even figure out for sure what all they were feeling. That is always what makes a writer feel great, when someone says, “you hit the nail on the head.”
About the series
In partnership with Nashville Songwriters Association International, every week we will interview a songwriter about his or her work.
| "Home So Fine" | |||
| August 1983 | |||
| Country | |||
| 3:09 | |||
| RCA | |||
| Walt Aldridge Tom Brasfield | |||
| Nelson Larkin, Earl Thomas Conley | |||
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"Holding Her and Loving You" is a song written by Walt Aldridge and Tom Brasfield and recorded by American country music artist Earl Thomas Conley. It was released in August 1983 as the second single from the album Don't Make It Easy for Me. The song was Conley's fourth number one country single.
Commercial performance[edit]
The single went to number one for one week and spent a total of fourteen weeks on the country chart.[1] Since it became available for download, the song has sold 156,000 copies as of April 2019.[2]
Music video[edit]
A music video for the song was released and has been seen on GAC.
Covers[edit]
In 1998, Clay Walker charted a live recording of this song, reaching number 68 on the same chart.
Chart performance[edit]
| US Hot Country Songs (Billboard)[3] | 1 |
| Canadian RPM Country Tracks | 2 |
References[edit]
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). The Billboard Book Of Top 40 Country Hits: 1944-2006, Second edition. Record Research. p. 88.
- ^ Bjorke, Matt (April 15, 2019). "Top 30 Digital Country Singles Chart: April 15, 2019". RoughStock. Retrieved July 25, 2019.
- ^ "Earl Thomas Conley Chart History (Hot Country Songs)". Billboard.