Here’s the perfect song for Amy Coney Barrett, who spent hours this week saying nothing at all. Alison Krauss recorded it for a 1994 tribute album to Keith Whitley, who had a No. 1 country hit with it in 1988, the year before he died. Krauss’ version was released as a single only after radio stations began playing it. In 1995 it became her first solo song to reach the charts and was named Single of the Year at the Country Music Awards. This version was filmed at a White House concert in 2014 — you can see the Obamas and Jill Biden in the front row.
Whitley’s version was the second in a string of five No. 1 country singles, two of them released after his death from alcohol poisoning at age 33.
Whitley’s joke about giving “a couple of unknown writers a break” gets a laugh because composers Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz were two of Music Row’s top songwriters in the ’80s and ’90s, penning the No. 1 hit “Forever and Ever, Amen” for Randy Travis and, in Schlitz’s case, “The Gambler,” made famous by Kenny Rogers. Overstreet recorded “When You Say Nothing at All” for his 1999 LP “A Songwriter’s Project Vol. I.”
