You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive

Darrell Scott wrote the song and released it on 22 April 1997 on his album Aloha from Nashville. He was researching his family history in Harlan County, Kentucky, and while searching a cemetery for his great-grandfather's grave he saw the phrase on a tombstone. The song follows coal mining through several generations of one family.

Loveless recorded it as track 12 of Mountain Soul, between January and March 2001 in Franklin, Tennessee. Her version runs 6:06, against 5:03 for the original. Scott played banjo on it, with an additional dobro part, alongside Gene Wooten on dobro, Deanie Richardson on fiddle and Butch Lee on tremolo mandolin. Scott has said she had difficulty singing the song at first, and that Gordy placed a picture of her coal-miner father in front of her and told her to sing it to her father. It was not a single, but it was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2002 International Bluegrass Music Awards. The upload in the hypersongs web is the studio recording from Mountain Soul.

Live and covers

In October 2022 she and Chris Stapleton sang it at the Kentucky Rising flood-relief benefit in Lexington. A month later they performed it at the 56th CMA Awards, with Scott on dobro. Rolling Stone's Jon Freeman wrote that the performance began quietly before her voice took hold, and that Stapleton mostly ceded the spotlight to her. The song then reached number 16 on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart. Setlist.fm lists it in ten of her setlists.

Brad Paisley, who said he chose it because he is a West Virginia native and had seen what coal mining did to communities there, recorded it the same year as Loveless. Kathy Mattea included it on her 2008 coal-themed album Coal. Montgomery Gentry recorded it before Troy Gentry's death in 2017, and it appeared on their 2019 album Outskirts. Michael & Carrie Kline, Red Molly and Beth Davidson have also recorded it. The television series Justified used it repeatedly: Paisley's version closed the first season in 2010 and was used again in the second season finale, Dave Alvin's version closed the fourth, the Ruby Friedman Orchestra's the fifth, and Scott's original closed the series.