With a note that said, “I’ll love her ’til I die”Īnd when we buried him beneath the willowĪ similar fate befalls the female character as news of the man’s death leaves her guilt-stricken.

We found him with his face down in the pillow Than the strength he had to get up off his knees Life is short, but this time it was bigger He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger It follows a couple whose painful separation has led them both down different paths with the same sad end. The song tells of tragedy against a ghostly gothic bluegrass backdrop. While “Whiskey Lullaby” was not written as a duet, it was Paisley’s idea to include a female vocalist, believing that there were only two people who could pull it off: Dolly Parton or Alison Krauss. And then, of course, the line that everyone remembers is, ‘Put the bottle to his head and pulled the trigger,’ so that was probably an example of cowriting in its purest form, where both people contribute pretty much equally to the process.” “And he loved that idea, and had been going through a lot of personal things in his life … he said, ‘Well, I put the bottle to my head and pulled the trigger a few times,’ and next thing I’m going, ‘Forget the midnight cigarette! I love put the bottle to the head and pulled the trigger!’ So what we did was we combined my line, ‘She put him out like the burning end of a midnight cigarette,’ as the opening line of ‘Whiskey Lullaby,’ and it worked really well. “Jon Randall and I got together to write one morning, and I came in and said, ‘I’ve got an idea to write a song called ‘Midnight Cigarette.’ Can you imagine a cigarette just sitting on an ashtray at midnight? Nobody’s smoking it or paying it any attention, and it just sort of burns out and goes out all by itself, and liken that to a relationship-it wasn’t like you hit a wall or anything, it just burned out, it just went away,” Anderson said. In Jake Brown’s 2014 book, Nashville Songwriter, Anderson recalled the collaboration with Randall. He met with his co-writer, Anderson, completed the song and eventually the tune made its way to Paisley. After seeing the state Randall was in during this time, it was his manager who told him, “Hey man, every now and then you’ve got to put a bottle to your head and pull the trigger.” Randall wrote down that line, thinking it would be great to use in a song. Jon Randall, one of the song’s co-writers alongside Bill Anderson, had been through the wringer before writing “Whiskey Lullaby.” He had just divorced his wife and fellow-country singer, Lorrie Morgan, and had also lost a record deal and songwriting contract, reportedly, all within a few days of each other.Īs a result, Randall discovered solace in the bottle, drinking regularly, and clinging to harmful and reckless habits.

Whiskey lullaby lyrics