Released July 7, 2008 Genre Country Label Show Dog Nashville | Format CD Single Length 3:36 | |
Writer(s) Toby Keith
Bobby Pinson | ||
"She Never Cried in Front of Me" is a single by American country music singer Toby Keith co-written by him and Bobby Pinson. It was released in July 2008 as the first single for his studio album, That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy, released on October 28. For the week of November 1, 2008, the song has become his 17th Number One hit on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
Contents
Content
The song is a mid-tempo ballad in which the narrator watches his former lover getting married. Upon doing so, he sees her crying, which makes him think of "all the hell" he put her through when they were together, thinking that nothing was wrong with her, because she "never cried in front of [him]".
Bobby Pinson wrote the song with Keith at Keith's house in mid-2007. According to Pinson, he sat down at Keith's piano and the two started working on the song there. According to Keith, it was the first time that he ever sat down at a piano to write a song, and he thought that it "changed everything. It brought a whole new approach to the melody."
Reception
The song received a "thumbs down" review from the country music site Engine 145. Reviewer Brady Vercher stated that the "lyric fleshes out too many irrelevant details that end up creating all sorts of logical fallacies", and that the song was generally over-produced. He also considered it derivative of Tracy Lawrence's 1994 hit "I See It Now", which also features a storyline based on a man's realization of "all the hell" he has put a former lover through. Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe gave the song an A-minus, saying that Keith "sings the hell out of" the song, but criticizing the "arena rock" production of the chorus.