Bill Anderson, the country singer with a nearly seven-decade career, has just released a new EP, Forevermore.
The project features “The Last One I’ll Forget,” which sees the 86-year-old Anderson serenading the love of his life, looking back on all the years that came before. The track probes at what may happen to an aging body—loss of sight or hearing, for example—and how that won’t affect the love he has for his partner. “If I ever lose my memory/You’ll be the last one I forget,” he sings in the emotional refrain.
“I wrote the lyric by visualizing myself as a man in his final years making sure he clearly communicated his everlasting and undying love for the woman who had been, ‘the best part of my years,’” the singer explained in a statement to People Magazine. “I didn’t feel the melody I had created, however, matched the sentiment of the lyrics. I shared the story with Steve [Dorff], and he sat at the keyboard in his studio, and in virtually less time than it takes to tell it, married the perfect melody to the story I was attempting to tell.”
Anderson has certainly earned the right to look back on his years with pride. After his first breakthrough with his song “City Lights” in 1958, the songwriter has maintained an active and impressive career ever since. Beyond his hits like “Still” and “Bright Lights And Country Music,” Anderson has also written countless songs for other artists including Kenny Chesney and George Strait. But that doesn’t mean he’s only been behind the scenes; in 2010, for example, he added vocals to “The Guitar Song,” a track he co-wrote with Jamey Johnson. And, in 2020, he released The Hits Re-Imagined, an album of rerecordings of some of the biggest songs throughout his career.
Listen to Bill Anderson’s Forevermore now.