Kimberly Schlapman, Karen Fairchild Share Heartfelt Story Behind ‘Don’t Die Young, Don’t Get Old’

“This was written a day after Jimi's sister's funeral. Karen had just come home from that, and we were talking about it, as girlfriends do,” shared Kimberly Schlapman of their writing session.

Written by Lauren Laffer
Kimberly Schlapman, Karen Fairchild Share Heartfelt Story Behind ‘Don’t Die Young, Don’t Get Old’
Little Big Town; Photo courtesy Sandbox Mgmt

Little Big Town’s eighth studio album, The Breaker, is finally out for fans around the world to listen to. Among the songs is a heartfelt track called “Don’t Die Young, Don’t Get Old,” a song the ladies of LBT penned alongside Hillary Lindsey, Liz Rose, and Lori McKenna, aka The Love Junkies.

While the day was spent among girlfriends and wine, it started with a heaviness as Karen Fairchild had just returned from the funeral of her husband and band mate Jimi Westbrook’s sister Joyce, who died in December 2015.

“This was written a day after Jimi’s sister’s funeral. Karen had just come home from that, and we were talking about it, as girlfriends do,” shared Kimberly Schlapman of their writing session. “You know, sitting around talking about what Jimi and the family had been through. We all loved Joyce so very much, so we just started brainstorming. Well, really it was just a conversation about catching up with Karen about what their family had been through, and then it sparked the song in honor of sweet Joyce.”

“She had a beautiful life, and we got to spend so much time with her,” added Fairchild. “You look at all the timing of the way things had happened for the band. Jimi had his vocal cord surgery, and we would never have been home to be with Joyce, and she had her treatment here, if that hadn’t happened to Jimi. So it was like, all this again, things that are really important, and you wonder why they’re happening sometimes, and then you look back and go, ‘Oh. We just spent six months with her,’ and it was incredible.”

While the topic was heavy, the words seemed to just flow out of the group of talented women. They credit McKenna, who recently won a GRAMMY for writing the Tim McGraw hit “Humble and Kind,” for coming up with the song’s initial message.

“Talking about if you were hanging out with a group of girls when you were 18, what would you be saying? You’d be saying, ‘Golly, I wish we could just live life and don’t die young and don’t get old,’” explained Fairchild. “Lori, of course, is the one that said that, and we just took it from there.”

After writing such a deep song about a personal loss, the ladies did what anyone else would do.

“We wrote something that was silly. We like to balance the heavy with the silly,” Fairchild concluded.

The Breaker is available in stores and at digital retailers now.