When You Say Nothing at All

The song was written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz; Overstreet told the author Ace Collins that the line came from trying to find another way to say nothing. Keith Whitley recorded it in 1988 for Don't Close Your Eyes on RCA, produced by Garth Fundis and Whitley, and it reached number one for two weeks at the end of that year and went platinum. Whitley died on May 9, 1989. CMT ranked it twelfth on its list of the 100 greatest love songs in 2004.

Alison Krauss & Union Station recorded it in 1994 for the tribute album Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album (BNA, September 27, 1994, produced by Blake Mevis and Randy Scruggs), at Scruggs Sound in Berry Hill, Tennessee, produced by Randy Scruggs, running 4:20. Stations began playing it without being asked and BNA released it as a single in January 1995, with Whitley's "Charlotte's in North Carolina" on the B-side. It reached number three on the country chart, number 53 on the Hot 100 and number 81 in the UK, went gold, and won the Country Music Association's single of the year in 1995. A production director at WMIL-FM in Milwaukee, Mike Cromwell, merged the two versions into an unofficial duet that spread through radio and was never officially released.

Other versions include Frances Black (1996, number 8 in Ireland), Ronan Keating (1999, from the film Notting Hill, number one in the UK) and Paulina Rubio (2003). A live version is on Live (2002). Our upload is titled only by the song's name, so which recording it is was not confirmed.