The 1965 song Don Henley could to listen to forever: “Over and over and over again”
Nothing that Don Henley ever made looked like a walk in the park to do.
Even though Eagles could sing like it was the most natural thing in the world whenever they stepped up to their microphones, a lot of their best songs were meticulously crafted to sound as note-perfect as possible behind the scenes. A lot of that came down to Henley being absolutely clinical in what the songs were supposed to sound like, but he also knew that there needed to be some extra meat to their tunes whenever someone approached their lyrics.
Because when you look at every other country rock band, it’s not like they were all sages of wisdom or anything. A lot of them were talking about the simple pleasures in life that all good country songs come from, but for someone that graduated with an English major, Henley wasn’t going to sidestep that part of his job. He wanted lyrics that meant something, and you can really hear that in the way that he articulates some of the band’s greatest songs.
That’s not to discount Glenn Frey’s contributions at all. ‘Take It Easy’ and ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ were perfect snapshots of what California looked like; it just wasn’t the kind of thing that people needed to think very hard about. And when it came to Henley’s approach, he knew that every song he ever sang needed to be the kind of work that people like Bob Dylan could be proud to have written
And that involved moving out of the typical love song realm. Eagles have written plenty of love songs over the years, but you can’t really name too many of them that are actually happy. ‘Best of My Love’ is a decent tune, but there’s still a bittersweet tone in Henley’s voice as he’s singing it, which carries over into the ballads that they would write later in their career like ‘The Sad Cafe’ and ‘Wasted Time’.
It’s not that love songs were taboo or anything; they were simply not necessary to what Henley was working on. No one would have thought to put a dopey love song the same way that The Beatles had done during their early years, and while Henley loved the idea of following in the Fab Four’s footsteps, he always gravitated towards the sadder songs like ‘Yesterday’ over ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.
Both kinds of songs were good for their own separate reasons, but Henley felt that it was easier to relate to heartbreak than anything else in a song, saying, “Sad songs, all the great romantic songs throughout history, from Frank Sinatra to Paul McCartney, every great songwriter does his best work writing sad songs. You can only hear ‘You Are My Sunshine’ so many times. On the other hand I could listen to ‘Yesterday’ by Paul McCartney over and over and over again.”
And for someone that grew up listening to the biggest country songs of all time, that really checks out. A tune like ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ is still one of the most impactful country songs of all time, and when you look at what the rest of Nashville was doing, some of their biggest homeruns came from when romance fell apart, whether that’s Dolly Parton singing ‘I Will Always Love You’ or even later on when The Chicks made tunes like ‘You Were Mine’.
Eagles have always been a hybrid of different styles of music, but if there’s one thing that’s been a constant country influence on Henley, it’s been that sense of heartache going throughout his music. It might not be the best feeling in the world for anyone to feel whenever they turn on the radio, but the fact these songs still hit like a sledgehammer only proves that you’re still human whenever they make you well up.
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