The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 14

Keith Whitley - When You Say Nothing At All

Keith Whitley. Photo courtesy of photobucket.com.

When You Say Nothing At All has the distinction of having topped the charts for three different performers: Keith Whitley, Alison Krauss and Ronan Keating. We’re featuring Whitley’s version because we think it’s the best of the three, and because he had one of the great voices for country singing – deep and expressive, with a twang that can only be described as western timbre... The song itself (by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz) is finely crafted, with a chorus that offers unexpected turns – small but satisfying. The musical accompaniment for Whitley will sound to an experienced ear a bit too much like the over-produced and ponderous ‘80s, but still the song has withstood the test of three decades.

Behind the song is a tragedy. Although he had been a musician since the late ‘60s, Whitley’s talent wasn’t commercially recognized until 1982, with the release of his solo album Don’t Close Your Eyes (with When You Say Nothing At All). For the next few years, he began to be thought of as an emerging superstar in Country Music. Sadly, he died of alcohol poisoning in 1989.

Buy When You Say Nothing At All at Amazon Mp3 or iTunes.