Story Behind the Song: Nikki Lane, ‘Forever Lasts Forever’
Singer-songwriter Jeff Hyde says he didn’t plan on writing a song about divorce when he and Ryan Tyndell joined Nikki Lane to write “Forever Lasts Forever;” in fact, the concept of “‘til death do us part” inspired the track. But then, the trio twisted those words around, and a divorce song was born.
Below, Hyde shares with The Boot the story behind Lane's "Forever Lasts Forever," one of the songs on her album Highway Queen.
I think that was the second song we wrote that day; I can’t remember what the first one was. Every time we get together with Nikki — and I think Ryan has written quite a few songs with with her, and I’ve written three or four with her — it’s always an easy day, because Nikki knows who she is as an artist -- what direction she would go and wouldn’t go. She can guide the song to what it needs to be for her to do it. When you write a song with Nikki, you usually get something pretty good, and it’s actually going to be in the pile of consideration once she records her record. She’s one of those kinds of artists that you feel like you’re making some traction when you write a song with her.
I think [Ryan and I] wrote the verse when we were trying to come up with a second [song]. I think Ryan came up with that idea, and we just kind of got on a real country thing. It would take a special artist to record a song that country in this market, but she made it her own and turned it into something pretty cool.
The concept for the chorus was pretty interesting: I thought, “’til death do us part, and it feels like our heart's dying,” so we kept the vow. I thought that was an interesting take on it.
It’s a pretty sad song when you think on it. But sometimes a concept that puts kind of a spin on a normal way of looking at something or a turn of a phrase -- where you take something that usually means one thing and kind of make it mean something different -- sometimes that can dictate what song you’re writing, even if it’s something you’d normally write about it. We didn’t say, “Hey, let’s write a divorce song,” necessarily, but the concept of it’d be kind of cool to write about a situation where a couple’s getting a divorce but they still kept their vows … "'til death do us part.” Well, they didn’t part ‘til their love died.
I still think divorce is a bad thing if you can avoid it, but sometimes you’re just a messenger in a sense. You’re not necessarily [always] writing about something you would endorse ... You’re writing about things you look around and observe as much as you are something that’s in the first person.