Originally posted by chargeroo
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4 George Jones, ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ (1980)
"Nobody will buy that morbid son of a bitch," George Jones told producer Billy Sherrill as he left the studio. Instead, "He Stopped Loving Her Today" was his first Number One in six years. If there's a bottom under the bottom, where humor mixes openly with despair, Jones knows it. By 1980 he was so lost he'd started speaking in split personalities, one of them Jones, another called the Old Man and a third called Dee-Doodle the Duck. It took him 18 months to finish "He Stopped Loving Her Today" on account of his speech being so slurred. The song's protagonist swore he'd love her 'til the day he died, Jones tells us, with Sherrill's string section rising behind him like some horror-movie hand shooting out of its grave. Then one day, he dies. Jones hated the song – he thought it was miserable and overly dramatic. It was. But country music often depends on the kind of hyperbole that real life can't bear. By Mike Powell
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