Behind The Song: Brandy Clark- "Love Can Go To Hell"
By Amanda Wicks
"Love Can Go to Hell" initially started off as a very different song for Brandy Clark. With only a title in mind, she thought about writing a song touching upon the ways love can fail. "I meant it like 'It can fall apart, like hell in a hand basket,'" she told Radio.com. "Cuz I hadn't thought of all the ways that it can mean something different."
But Clark approached her friend and fellow songwriter Scott Stepakoff, who saw things differently. "Love Can Go to Hell" became a curse, a "get out of my life" demand when love requires too much and offers too little. From there, things quickly came to fruition.
Appearing on Clark's Big Day in a Small Town, "Love Can Go to Hell," didn't seem like it was going to be any kind of big song compared to other tracks on the album. Clark and her producer Jay Joyce labeled each one in terms of where it fell in the proverbial "town," and "Love Can Go to Hell" struck Clark as an "outskirts of town song." But that outlier would go on to earn her a GRAMMY nomination for Best Country Solo Performance.
Related: Brandy Clark: From 'Small Towns' to Broadway Dreams
Find out if "Love Can Go to Hell" wins at the 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards, which will be held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on February 12. It will air on CBS at 8pm ET.
