This song is about a man whose girl goes away, but his love for her never dies until the day that he himself dies - that's the day he stops loving her.
This was George Jones' comeback song after years of trouble with the law and addiction.

He got a big career boost when it won for Single of the Year at the CMA awards and took a Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.

CMT named this the second-best country song of all-time. The #1 country song of all-time as named by CMT was Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man."

When George Jones recorded this song, he didn't believe it was a hit, and he wasn't shy at telling his producer Billy Sherrill so. "I looked Billy square in the eye and said, 'Nobody will buy that morbid son of a bitch,'" the Nashville star recalled in his autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All.

But Jones changed his mind once this became a hit. "To put it simply, I was back on top," the Opry member wrote. "Just that quickly. I don't want to belabor this comparison, but a four-decade career was salvaged by a three-minute song."

This was written by country songwriters Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, who wrote Tammy Wynette's #1 hit "D-I-V-O-R-C-E."

Braddock came up with the idea for the song, which he says was probably inspired by his love for his second wife, but he doesn't admire the narrator.

"It's the story of a man whose love was so strong that the only way he could get over this woman was to die. I think he was a terrible role model, a very bad role model. The man was obsessed with this woman and he never got over.

He never moved on," he told NPR. "I thought it was just an okay song. I didn't think it was that great a song. And when the producer Billy Sherrill played me George's recording of it, I went, 'Wow, this is something really great.'

And I think in this instance, the artist and the production elevated the song to a place that it wouldn't have been otherwise.

I really attribute so much of the success of this to George Jones and his producer. Because after I heard it, I realized then it was indeed something very special."