“If You Ever Stop Loving Me”
Montgomery Gentry
Written by Bob DiPiero, Rivers Rutherford, and Tom Shapiro
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
June 25, 2004
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
July 3, 2004
Montgomery Gentry had been successful at radio and retail for several years without scoring a number one hit, coming closest with the regressive “She Couldn’t Change Me” a few years earlier.
They finally reached the summit with the best single that they’d ever release. There’s a delicious euphoria that makes “If You Ever Stop Loving Me” soar so much higher than what they’d done before. The self-seriousness of their earlier work was often delivered with a sneer and rarely with a smile. Not here, and the production has to get a lot of the credit for that.
The record opens with a guitar rendition of the chorus hook that is lopped throughout, and it creates a loop of brightness that does the heavy lifting for the boys. They don’t actually deliver the chorus any differently than they’d done on earlier releases , but because the hook has already been established, it sounds joyous anyway.
They sound happy almost in spite of themselves, which fits the lyric perfectly. It’s a great song at its core, and an even better record. It’s a perfect example of how an act can punch above their weight and deliver a classic.
“If You Ever Stop Loving Me” gets an A.
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Is this the first country song to have the perjorative “sucks” in it?
I thought it was 3edgy5me at the time, but it’s grown on me considerably. I still consider “Something to Be Proud Of” their magnum opus, but in my opinion they didn’t miss once on Columbia. They always felt like far more of a DUO than “Ronnie Dunn and that other guy who sings like three words of backup vocals”. And this song still sounds fresh and modern 20+ years later.
I ran hot and cold with Montgomery Gentry over the years but this was definitely among their best, and a deserving #1. It delivers better lyrics and a more authentic outlaw edge than the silly “Hell Yeah”, coupling it with a measure of humility that is rare on outlaw-style tracks and rare on Montgomery Gentry tracks generally.
No dissertation here but it definitely lifted Montgomery Gentry to a more sustained hitmaking duo that didn’t seem at all like it was destined to be a sure thing a couple of years earlier.
Grade: B+
To me, Montgomery Gentry was such a criminally underrated country act of this decade, and looking back at this tune in particular, I love its hard-edged sound. Troy Gentry was doing all the heavy lifting but Eddie Montgomery having decent vocal chops runs in the family. I mean, Eddie’s older brother was the occasional 90s hitmaker, John Michael Montgomery, to be fair.