In 1997, Trisha Yearwood sang How Do I Live on the soundtrack for the movie Con Air.  I liked the song, but I couldn’t help but thinking of it as a sequel of sorts to her earlier 1992 hit Down On My Knees.

They’re both songs in which a woman tells the man she loves that if he left her, she doesn’t know what she would do.

It’s never made clear in either song, but I always believed that in How Do I Live, the woman is talking about a hypothetical.  An, “oh honey, we’re perfect together, we could never dream of being apart.”  She’s singing a ballad about how happy she is.

I always thought in Down On My Knees Trisha knew deep down that her man was already gone.  Maybe I’m wrong.  But that’s the beauty of music–once the artist has put it out in the world, it no longer belongs only to them.  The listener gets to bring what they want, and know, and love to the music as well.