Vince Gill and Amy Grant are country music’s power couple for the Christmas season. Attending their annual Ryman Auditorium residency shows has become a holiday tradition for countless fans. This year, they released their first collaborative Christmas album. However, neither Gill nor Grant are strangers to creating timeless Christmas songs.
Gill famously finished writing his hit song “Go Rest High on That Mountain” after his older brother, Bob Coen died in 1993. However, that wasn’t the only song that painful loss inspired. The pain he felt when the holiday season came around that year became the song “It Won’t Be the Same This Year.” Watch Gill perform the song at the Ryman in 2012 below.
“I made my first Christmas record almost 20 years ago and I tried to write some songs for it because I fancy myself as a songwriter,” Gill recalled, introducing the song. “Everything I was trying to come up with just sounded stupid. I started talking about mistletoe and presents and trees. And I thought, ‘Man, that’s so lame. It’s already been written. You’re just killing yourself.’ Then in the process of making that record, I lost my brother,” he explained. “All of a sudden, I said, ‘Man, I’ve got something to write a song about,” he added.
Before playing the song, Gill explained that he met a fan before the show who told him it was her first Christmas without her son. “She had tears in her eyes and I had a lump in my throat,” he recalled. “So, I’m going to do this one for you,” he added.
Vince Gill Turns His Pain into a Healing Holiday Classic
Vince Gill didn’t hide behind metaphors in “It Won’t Be the Same This Year.” Instead, he looked the pain he felt after losing his brother in the eye and turned it into a beautiful memorial.
In the opening verse, he sings about it being his first time going home since his brother passed away. The song only gets more emotionally heavy from there. His favorite time was always Christmas. / We’d reminisce about the days gone by. / Oh, how I wish that he were still here with us. / My memories of him will never die, Gill sings in the second verse.
He lays out the important lesson the loss taught him in the song’s final verse. It’s helped me learn what Christmas really means. / There’s nothing more important than your family. / We’re all the children of the King of Kings.
Gill included “It Won’t Be the Same This Year” on his first Christmas album Let There Be Peace on Earth in 1993. He revisited the song for his 2015 holiday release Christmas.
