What do you think is the story behind Someday When I Stop Loving You?

[Razz]

As a writer I am constantly looking for the motivation behind something that was written or looking for a story behind a song. Someday When I Stop Loving You goes down as one of those top 4 or 5 songs that you can really feel the emotion in the song. When I hear it I feel this deep sense of melancholy, like you know you will never get over this person, you'll never be the same. I will probably always remember this song in my mind. I sing it all the time.

I'm interested to hear other people's take on what goes on in the song. In my mind, it was a really long (or maybe not so long) and strong relationship between two young adults. Carrie says, "One foot on the bus, about half past 9, I knew that you were leaving this time". So in my mind, the woman was the one who did something wrong in this song instead of the man. I imagine she cheated on him or did something along those lines, and they had maybe fought about it for a long time and struggled with multiple issues over a long period of time before he finally decided he was going to leave for good this time.

And then the other line "I remember that night we laid in bed//Naming all our kids that we hadn't had yet//One for your grandma and one for mine// Said we'd draw straws when it came time" To me, their families were obviously very close or maybe their grandmothers had passed away and that was their way of remembering them. Also, they hadn't had kids yet, but did plan on it, so maybe they were in their early 20s.

I know it's kind of silly, but those kinds of things interest me, especially when it's a song like this that is so powerful as far as emotion goes. I can't really relate to it because I haven't had something like that happen to me yet, but I imagine lots of people relate to this song and that's part of why it's so popular.

The unreleased songs are a lot of fun to do this with because they are open-ended. They don't have a music video that depicts what's going on, so you can come up with the story yourself or try to figure it out on your own.

 

[Eder Rodrigues]

In my mind, she didn't cheated the guy. Maybe he did, but not her. I think he felt in love with another woman and decided to end the relationship. That's why is so hard for her to get over her feelings and stop loving him. She gave all she had, but in the end, it wasn't enough to keep him loving her. I love this song, it makes me very sad when I hear, but I simply love : )

 

[Farawayhills]

To me, the line "I'll move on baby, just like you", with the following couplet that suggests she finds it impossible to move on, doesn't seem to point to the woman having done something that would destroy the relationship. It suggests that she's the one devastated by his leaving. If she'd been unfaithful, even if she now regretted it, I think she'd be less shocked at the outcome, and would be expressing some remorse or plea for reconciliation, rather than this sense of desperation . I think it's the man who (for whatever reason) has tired of the relationship and has decided to move on with his life. His motivation, though, is not explored - there is only the suggestion (in the words "this time" ) that he may have been on the brink of leaving before, and is finally going through with it.
The sense of desperation is really emphasized by the line where the woman thinks about lying down in front of the bus.

The song can also be contrasted with "Remind Me". "Remind Me" stresses a passion which has since ebbed and become stale. SWISLY stresses a togetherness that had reached the stage of it being natural to plan a family. The big difference is that, in "Remind Me", both parties show a desire to rekindle the fire and save the relationship - but in SWISLY, it's gone beyond that hope, and only one party is showing the regret that it cannot be saved.

The line "when the grass turns blue" is almost certainly a tribute reference to Dolly Parton's "The Grass Is Blue" - which is a song that explored a similar theme, in which the woman gets through her sense of emptiness by imagining a series of things that are as impossible as her forgetting her sense of loss.