Elephant

"Elephant" was written by Isbell alone and is track four of Southeastern, 3:37, released on June 11, 2013; it was not a single. The album credits it to Isbell solo rather than to the 400 Unit. Per-track personnel, the studio and the date are not known, and iTunes added a demo at 3:57. The song is about a woman with cancer, seen through her closest friend and lover. Isbell said on NPR that he imagined a couple of folks who were drinking buddies, nothing more than that, and that the two are not necessarily real people; it was generally inspired by watching regulars at an Alabama bar disappear to cancer. Wikipedia says he describes the subject as one nearly everyone has experienced and that it can be hard to sing.

Saving Country Music wrote on June 14, 2013 of a complete deconstruction and compromising of the emotional guards protecting a listener's heart. Jim Beviglia wrote in November 2023 that it is so rare to hear a song that's directly about the disease, and Americana UK calls it a touchstone. It was played at the Austin City Limits taping in 2013 (on the 2014 DVD), at The Armory in Minneapolis on June 14, 2019 as the sixth of 14 songs, and at the Hammersmith Apollo in late November 2022, which one reviewer called possibly the most moving performance of any song he had heard live. A live version from the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville is on the 2023 reissue. Setlist.fm shows 112 plays, their fourth most played song, behind "Alabama Pines" (182), "Cover Me Up" (167) and "Traveling Alone" (142). No chart history, video, covers or samples were found, and which version our upload is has not been established.