Without You

"Without You" is a song written by Eric Silver along with Natalie Maines, lead singer of the American country group the Dixie Chicks, who recorded the song for their 1999 album Fly. It was released as the album's fifth single in August 2000 and in January 2001, hit Number One on the U.S. country singles chart. It also reached number 31 on the U.S. pop singles chart.

History

Written by lead singer Natalie Maines and country songwriter Eric Silver, "Without You" is on the surface one of the Chicks' more conventional efforts, lacking the "attitude" factor that distinguished them at the time. A ballad that directly speaks of lost love

I thought by now the time,

Would take away these lonely tears.

I hope you're doing fine all alone,

But where do I go from here, 'cause —

Without you, I'm not okay

And without you, I've lost my way

My heart's stuck in second place

Ooo - ooo

Without you ...

it was accompanied by acoustic guitar and soft percussion at the start, adding drums on the chorus, pedal steel guitar into the bridge and a dramatic strings part out of the bridge and into the last chorus, before finishing as it started. The tender melody is sung by Maines without excessive ornamentation, and the harmonies from Emily Robison and Martie Seidel are unobtrusive.

"Without You" was performed on the Chicks' 2000 Fly Tour, but generally not on subsequent tours.

Music video

The music video for "Without You" was one of the Chicks' more startling. Directed by Thom Oliphant and Maines' husband Adrian Pasdar, almost every shot was of a nude person against a completely white background, be it the three Chicks (from the shoulders up), a muscular African-American male, a very pregnant woman, another woman, or a baby. Vulnerability was the general tone. In contrast to their more frivolous early videos from the same album, such as for "Cowboy Take Me Away", here they looked much more serious, with Maines having longer hair and Robison having made her move to dark hair.

The video ends on a very sad note, with a white-on-black inscription reading "Dedicated to the memory of Jackson Miles Ezell Oct. 7 – Oct. 11, 2000". The actress playing the pregnant woman in the video had given birth shortly after it was made, but her son only lived four days. The Chicks were very upset and offered to re-shoot a new video, but the mother wanted this one released, and so the Chicks added the postscript in remembrance.

Chart performance

References