This Earl Thomas Conley Hit From 1983 Was Inspired by a Simon & Garfunkel Classic

In 1983, Earl Thomas Conley already had several hits when he released “Holding Her And Loving You”. The song, written by Walt Aldridge and Tom Brasfield, appears on Don’t Make It Easy On Me, Conley’s third studio album on RCA Records.

One of only two songs Conley did not write for Don’t Make It Easy On Me, “Holding Her And Loving You” is a new take on the subject of infidelity. It’s also a unique layout of a song, which has several verses and no chorus. “Holding Her And Loving You” ends with, “Girl the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do / Is holding her and loving you.”

Aldridge later admits that the idea for the structure of “Holding Her And Loving You” came from “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, a Simon & Garfunkel classic.

“I was always drawn to some of the older songs that didn’t even have choruses,” Aldridge tells The Tennessean. “They just had refrains that happened at the end of a verse. You know, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ ain’t too bad a song. So, I was trying to write a lot of songs that way. … I was determined to write a song that didn’t have a chorus because I felt like it might give us a little bit of an edge in terms of being more unique than what everybody else was pitching.”

The Story Behind “Holding Her And Loving You”

The premise of “Holding Her And Loving You” is that a man is married to one woman he cares about, even though he is in love with someone else.

“At least he feels bad about it, you know?” Aldridge reflects. “He’s not such a scoundrel that he’s trying to hang scalps on his belt. I think everybody, at some point in their life, has been in that uncomfortable situation where you are in a relationship and maybe you’re attracted to somebody else, even if it’s in junior high. You’re having a hard time making up your mind or getting out of one to the other.”

It was Brasfield who came into the writing session with, “It’s the third hardest thing I’ll ever do.” It’s the line that kicked off what remains one of Conley’s biggest hits.

“I said, ‘Leaving here without you,’” Aldridge remembers. “So, once you have said what the third hardest thing is, everybody is like, ‘What’s two and number one? I want to hear the countdown.’”

Aldridge knew they had written a hit. Still, he admits that it’s Conley’s performance that makes “Holding Her And Loving You” so special.

“It was a song that I have to say was made exponentially better by the record that Earl Thomas Conley and [producer] Nelson Larkin made,” Aldridge says. “What a great record. When you heard Earl sing it, you just felt the pain and felt like, ‘Okay, he’s going through this. He’s got to be living this. He wrote this.’ It’s one of those deals where he just sold it.”

Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images

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