The country duo hitmakers, Maddie & Tae, bring their wounded-soul to life in the song “Die From a Broken Heart.” The heartbreaking ballad filled with tears and a thrilling sense of romantic loss was released as the second single from their 2019 studio album The Way It Feels.
The song quickly hit No. 1 on the Billboard and Mediabase Country Airplay charts. It also peaked at No. 22 US Billboard Hot 100, becoming the duo’s first and highest-charting song on the chart.
The Story Behind The Song
Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye wrote “Die From a Broken Heart” together with two of their favorite writers in town: Jonathan Singleton and Deric Ruttan. It tells the tale of a brokenhearted daughter calling her mother back home to seek wisdom and comfort after a breakup.
“How does he sleep at night? Mama, the nerve of this guy. To leave me so easy. Am I gonna be alright? I wanna kick myself for fallin’ so hard. Mama, can you die from a broken heart?” the song goes.
Marlow and Dye revealed that the tender ballad is very personal to both of them as they wrote it right when they were about to begin switching labels.
“We were still in the in-between, and we were feeling broken and feeling defeated at this point in our career — maybe not in a relationship, but in our career, we were really, really having a hard time [with] the unknown and the uncertainty,” Marlow said during an interview with The Boot in 2018. “And when [Jonathan] mentioned that title, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh!'”
Maddie & Tae were signed to the revived Dot Records – through a joint venture between Big Machine Label Group and Universal Music Group – for their self-titled first EP and debut album in 2014. However, as they started working on their second project, Dot Records shut down, leaving the duo without a label home.
While they were at a career crossroads, Dye also broke up with her longtime boyfriend and fellow singer-songwriter, Jackie Lee. Marlow helped Dye to tap into her emotions when they wrote “Die From a Broken Heart.”
“We just started talking about our heartbreaks, what those conversations sounded like, and started putting that into the song,” Marlow recalled when they came up with the song’s concept. “But I knew what Tae was going through, and so I was kind of trying to protect her from having to go super-deep to where it was going to ruin the day, but also let her heal a little bit through songwriting.”
Guess it just takes a little stumble and fall to get that success that you want. You can listen to Maddie & Tae’s “Die From a Broken Heart” in the video below.
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Maddie and Tae