How Can I Help You Say Goodbye

Karen Taylor-Good and Burton Banks Collins wrote the song in about three hours. Collins was an actor, and it was the first song he had written. The title came from his grandmother shortly before her death in 1988. The lyric deals with three losses, a childhood best friend moving away, a divorce and a mother's death, and the chorus is a mother comforting her child.

Loveless recorded it as the last track of Only What I Feel, with Emory Gordy Jr. producing and arranging the strings. By the time radio stations began asking for it as a single the album had sold more than 650,000 copies. Epic released it in March 1994 as the album's fourth single, with How About You on the B-side. It reached number three on Billboard's Hot Country Singles and Tracks chart in the week of 4 June 1994, spent 20 weeks on it, reached number 19 in Canada and finished 1994 at number 48 on the US year-end list. Loveless said in 1993 that a letter from Collins gave her the strength to get through the song, and she told Billboard in 1994 that she was getting standing ovations for it. Larry Flick of Billboard wrote that a broken heart never sounded so good, and editors at the Gavin Report noted that she had trouble getting through the song in the studio. Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly called it enormously involving.

Awards and covers

The video, directed by Jim Shea, was nominated for Video of the Year by both the CMA and the ACM in 1995. The song earned two Grammy nominations that year, for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Song, and a Song of the Year nomination at the Music City News Country Songwriters Awards. Laura Branigan recorded it in 1994 for her album Over My Heart, and Melanie Safka recorded it on her 1993 album Silvery Anniversary. Setlist.fm lists it in nine of Loveless's setlists. The upload in the hypersongs web is the studio recording from Only What I Feel.