“The Long Goodbye”
Brooks & Dunn
Written by Paul Brady and Ronan Keating
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
March 23, 2002
Irish singer Ronan Keating fronted the Irish boy band Boyzone before becoming a successful solo artist, and he covered a few country hits with his group and on his own.
Brooks & Dunn helped him repay the favor to Nashville by turning one of Keating’s own compositions into a major country hit. This has always been my favorite single from Steers & Stripes. It showcases Ronnie Dunn’s ability to deliver a pop vocal performance, and it features musical flourishes that give it a cinematic flair, like the swooning strings that rise up during the carousel line in the second verse.
Brooks & Dunn also had the good taste to cover Kim Richey, but that single (“Every River”) didn’t make it to the top. We’ll see the superstar duo again with the lead single from their next album.
“The Long Goodbye” gets an A.
Every No. 1 Single of the 2000s
Previous: Martina McBride, “Blessed” |
This is one of my favorite B&D singles.
I don’t think I’ve heard this song in at least 15 years. Radio has done a pretty astonishing job of erasing it considering how good it sounds. Ronnie Dunn has always done a great job of capturing wistful grief that really gets inside the listener’s bones. It usually uplifts even some of Brooks and Dunn’s more forgettable ballads like “I’ll Never Forgive My Heart”. But when he has a great song, he really knocks it out of the park. “The Long Goodbye” is my favorite Brooks and Dunn ballad at least since “She Used to be Mine”. With its glossy production and “cinematic flair” you describe, it feels like a mid-80s Ronnie Milsap ballad updated with 2000-era production. The instrumental mimic of the carousel in the second verse that matches the lyric was a particularly nice touch. I didn’t realize the Ronan Keating connection. My girlfriend is a fan of his so I’ll have to ask her if she’s familiar with this song.
I liked all five singles from “Steers and Stripes”, which definitely was not a sure thing with me when it came to Brooks and Dunn. Their comeback was well earned and they managed to pull it off by raising the bar with better songs and higher energy. It’s too bad we only ever get to hear two of them when we turn on the radio in the 2020s.
Grade: A-
Ooh, love the comparison to Ronnie Milsap. Didn’t think of that, but I can totally see it.
I also love the Ronnie Milsap comparison! I can totally hear him singing this, too.
I actually hear a lot of 80s country influence in a lot of contemporary country from the early 2000s. For example Trace Adkins’ “Help Me Understand” gives me a Kenny Rogers vibe, and even George Strait’s “She’ll Leave You With A Smile” has a melody that sounds like an 80s Conway Twitty song.
This is another example of how Ronnie Dunn always perfectly interprets a song vocally. He gets deserved credit for being an incredible singer. However, the choices he makes vocally always elevates a song to a higher level than most others could ever achieve.
Definitely an A for me.
The production kicks ass here. One of their meatiest ballads… and yet it got seemingly zero recurrent play.
The heavy production of this album was the real secret sauce imo.
I had not heard this song in a long time – I’m not sure why because this is a very good song, easily worth the “A”
Loved Faith Hill’s cover of this for some ACM tribute show.
This is also one of my personal favorites of the Steers & Stripes singles and one of my most favorite Brooks & Dunn songs from the 2000s and of all time. I’m very pleasantly surprised it was a number one, since it’s sadly become one of their “forgotten” hits.
This is such a fine example of the stylish, sophisticated version of pop country from the early 2000s that I really miss. It’s a really beautiful sounding song, especially with the strings, but also has a cool vibe to it. As mentioned already, Mark Wright’s big atmospheric, or as Kevin better describes, cinematic production on this track really shines, and it’s just one example of his creative, stylish kind of work featured on many albums he produced in the first few years of the 2000s. For me personally, I’ve always gotten a high tech, futuristic vibe from the sound of this song, and I kind of imagine it being what a country ballad would sound like in a futuristic world similar to the one shown in the early 2002 Gary Sinise and Madeleine Stowe film, Impostor, which my dad and I saw back when “The Long Goodbye” was a current single on the radio. I can imagine listening to this while riding in a flying car, a spaceship, or any kind of advanced form of public transportation. Heck, even the sound of the steel guitar in the beginning sounds futuristic, as do the cool sounding echo effects on Ronnie’s vocals throughout. I also really love how it sounds like there is a gust of cold wind blowing during the very start of the song, which symbolizes the downbeat theme of a relationship that’s fallen on hard times and coming to a bitter end. And yes, as Kevin pointed out, I also really like how the lush strings are used cleverly throughout, with the carousel part being one of my favorites.
Ronnie Dunn also does what he does best here, which is sing the heck out of a great ballad and make you feel every bit of emotion, and I especially love how this particular song shows that he can sing something that’s not exactly traditional country and still make it sound so good. In his performance, I can hear the pain and confusion and the narrator’s conflicted feelings of knowing it’s time to call it quits but still wishing they could turn things around. I especially love when Ronnie does one of his signature growls during the second verse as he sings with frustration, “going round and round and NEVER getting anywhere..”
“Ain’t Nothin’ Bout You” and “Only In America” were already somewhat departures from what I was used to hearing from Kix and Ronnie earlier in 2001, but when I first heard “The Long Goodbye,” it confirmed to me that Brooks & Dunn were going in a completely new direction from the duo’s past honky tonk, more traditional leaning sound in the 90s. And it was pretty clear that country music was definitely changing as the new decade went on, with a new high tech “futuristic” sound being featured in many new songs on the radio. This was, by far, the most pop influenced I’d ever heard the duo sound before, and it really came as a surprise at the time. Despite that, though, I really grew to enjoy the song, especially the melody, and the way Ronnie Dunn sounded during the choruses. I personally put the “The Long Goodbye” in the same category as other “surprising” pop leaning singles from around late 2001 and 2002 from other artists whom I was used to hearing more traditional leaning country from, and that list includes: “In Another World” by Joe Diffie, “Heather’s Wall” by Ty Herndon, “I’m Tryin'” by Trace Adkins, “Run” by George Strait, “‘Til Nothing Comes Between Us” by John Michael Montgomery, “Something Worth Leaving Behind” by Lee Ann Womack, and “Beautiful Mess” by Diamond Rio. For the record, I really love all of those songs, and I wish modern mainstream country music had continued to sound more like that for much longer in the 21st century. To me, those songs sound more progressive and futuristic sonically than much of what’s come out in the last 20 years. And of course, I had no idea that in the real future we would be hearing lyrics that are much more regressive than what we were getting at the start of the new millennium, but that’s a different discussion for another time…
And as others seem to have experienced, “The Long Goodbye” sadly also got very little to no recurrent airplay on our two main stations after its chart run was done. It wasn’t until the early 2010s when I picked up a copy of Steers & Stripes that I finally got to hear it again, and I ended up appreciating it even more that time around. Around that time, I was revisiting a lot of early 2000s country, and I was especially coming to appreciate a lot of Mark Wright’s production work from around that time, which made me want to get the album. I also loved getting to hear and enjoy the cool Latin flavored “My Heart’s Lost To You,” all over again, and I’m a bit surprised that one didn’t go number one, since I heard it so many times on the radio in 2002. Again, it showed that B&D could tackle all kinds of styles and how they were on a very creative streak at the time. My other personal favorite single off the album is the Kim Richey cover, “Every River,” which would’ve gone number one if I had my way. As expected from a Richey song, I love the chiming guitars and catchy melody, and Ronnie delivers the message of undying love and devotion with a very sincere, heartfelt performance. Plus, I’ve always loved that neat “falling” sound effect used right after Ronnie sings “Every star would fall out of the sky” during the final chorus, which was another cool production choice from Mark Wright. I really do wish B&D had continued to do more music in the vein of Steers & Stripes and its singles in the 2000s.
While I wasn’t hearing Brooks & Dunn sing “The Long Goodbye” on the radio anymore by 2004, my step dad and I did see future Canadian country star, George Canyon, perform the song on one of the early episodes of the second season of Nashville Star that year. Despite Canyon first presenting himself as a traditionalist when he debuted on the show singing “Ring Of Fire,” “The Long Goodbye” was also a great match for his deep, emotional vocals. I remember as Canyon was singing “The Long Goodbye,” my step dad said, “He sounds like another Buddy!” meaning that he thought he sounded as good as Buddy Jewell did the first season and could possibly be the one to win it all in the end (He ended up getting second place, but I still wish he won). Since I could no longer hear the Brooks & Dunn version on the radio, it was actually George Canyon’s version that was always going through my head whenever I thought about the song, and for the longest time, I’d always remember Canyon launching into the chorus with “This is the long goodbye!…” in his unique booming deep vocals, lol.
It was also really neat eventually finding out that the song was written by Irish pop star, Ronan Keating. I really enjoy his country covers, especially his version of “When You Say Nothing At All,” which I first heard when my parents and I first saw the Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant movie, Notting Hill, in 1999. “Life Is A Rollercoaster” is also one of my favorite feel good pop songs from the early 2000s. :)