Watch Sara Evans Revamp the Breakup Song in ‘Put My Heart Down’ Video
Sara Evans‘ “Put My Heart Down” is changing things up. First of all, it’s an uptempo breakup song — a bit of a rarity in country music. Furthermore, its narrator is extremely level-headed and — without blaming her soon-to-be-ex for lying, cheating or any other crimes of the heart — just simply knows it’s time to call it quits. Not exactly your typical love ’em and leave ’em song.
“She’s being very smart and strong, recognizing a bad relationship and saying, ‘Please leave me alone. Please walk away.’ It’s painful for her to say that, but she knows she needs to, which is not that common,” Evans tells Rolling Stone Country. “I’m always drawn to songs where the woman is the victim, the one being hurt. But I like that this one is saying, ‘Let’s stop this while we’re ahead.’ So many people will stay in a bad relationship, even at the very beginning when they see warning signs, and they’ll still pursue that relationship when they know it’s not a good match. How many divorces would not happen if people would recognize the warning signs early on? If the relationship is toxic, move on. There are a gazillion fish in the sea.”
To further color outside the country lines, there are no actors playing out the breakup in the song’s video, which makes its world premiere on Rolling Stone Country. [Watch above.] Instead, the Peter Zavadil-directed clip has a cast of one: Evans. Set inside an historic mansion in Nashville, the video shows the singer on a couch surrounded by lights… seemingly hundreds of lights, hanging from the ceiling and scattered on the floor.
“It’s to symbolize the light going off in her head,” she explains. “It’s her being smart and realizing exactly what the relationship is. It’s not that she has 100 percent courage to do this. [She’s saying], ‘I’ll walk away, and you walk away… but you first. Don’t pursue me, because it’s going to be hard for me to resist you.'”
“Put My Heart Down” is the second single off Evans’ Slow Me Down album. It was written by Nathan Chapman, Andrew Dorff and Elizabeth Huett.