For the version Brooks co-wrote and recorded for his 1990 album No Fences (and the version that went to No. However, the murder only happens in the video version of the song. In 1990, Brooks got banned from CMT with the video for “The Thunder Rolls,” a grim ballad about a wife who ends her spouse’s cheating and abusive ways by killing him after another night of carousing. The time-honored theme extends back far before the modern country era - Lloyd Price’s 1959 classic “Stagger Lee” is based on an 1895 murder, and the first sung version surfaced in 1911 - but no genre has embraced the trope as thoroughly as country.īelow are some of country music’s other best (and most popular) murder ballads over the last 75 years. The matter-of-fact song, written by HARDY, Hunter Phelps, Jordan Schmidt and Renee Blair, is lighting up country music, with CMA song of the year whispers already emerging. After five years, she still visits him in jail, but there’s no hint of a prison romance, or even that he will ever be released - just cold comfort that she is now safe. The man drives to her home, takes his gun from under his seat, kills her abuser and then coolly waits for the cop - all while she waits in the truck. HARDY and Wilson trade off verses to tell their story. He can’t heal her, but he decides he can stop her from ever being hurt again.

The latest entry in the legacy is HARDY’s searing “Wait in the Truck,” featuring Lainey Wilson: a brutal, bleak story of a man who picks up a woman he quickly discovers has been bruised and battered. Country music is rich with murder ballads - emotional tales of revenge that often end in some ne’er-do-well getting the comeuppance they richly deserve, frequently at the hands of one of their victims or someone acting on their behalf.

Garth brooks song about truck driver