This month, all my A to Z Challenge posts will feature a song that is on my personal list of “deep cuts.” These are songs that my husband often razzes me about, that there’s no one else who has ever heard of them or is listening to them, or they’re songs that possibly are just not that mainstream. If we are of the same era or run in the same musical taste circles, none of these may seem that off the beaten path, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun songs! Enjoy!

Blake Shelton is everywhere. You can’t escape him or his music. Christina Aguilera is incredibly talented, but she probably isn’t in her prime professionally anymore. This duet by them grabs my heart, but I never hear it played anywhere. I think that on country stations, there is just too much other music available by Blake Shelton, and this song is too “country” for pop stations that play Christina Aguilera’s music.

What I love about this song is the pain in Blake Shelton’s voice. I can actually feel his sadness at losing the woman he loves. To me, he is the one who really makes this song so great. Christina Aguilera has a wonderful voice, but I feel like she over-sings a lot, and a song like this, I feel like the big, loud voice doesn’t do the pain justice. When I listen to this song, I feel the pain. There are phrases that really seem to grab me — “Just gotta get past the midnight hour/maybe tomorrow it won’t be this hard”, “I had my heart set on you”, “I’m just a fool for holding on to something that’s never ever gonna come back/
I can’t accept that it’s lost/ I should’ve let it go, held my tongue, kept my big mouth shut/
‘Cause now everything is just wrong, wrong, wrong.” I don;t know why, but these lines just make my heart break.

Listen to the song and let me know if you feel the pain as well.