One of the tracks on Chris Stapleton’s new album, Starting Over, has been getting a lot of attention because of its emotional topic and has folks wiping tears from their eyes. Chris wrote “Maggie’s Song” the day after his beloved dog, Maggie, passed away. Word for word, the song is a true story of how he and Morgane rescued the precious pup and how she became a member of the Stapleton family, especially watching over their children, until the day she passed away. Chris says she was such a good dog, that she deserved a song of her own.

“She deserved a tribute of a song. Now, whether or not I did her justice in the song, I don’t know, but she was a dog that deserved a song so I wrote a song about her the day after she died,” says Chris. “That song happened to carry through to me being allowed to play it live, and we wound up in the studio and we recorded it. And now it lives in the world to make people, um, more sad than they deserve to be (laughs) in a year that we don’t need much of that.  But I loved that dog very much, and she was a great member of our family.”

“Maggie’s Song” Lyrics:

Let me tell you a story
About an old friend of mine
Somebody left her in a shopping cart
In a parking lot for us to find
Just a fuzzy black pup
She was hungry and feeling alone
We put her in the back seat
And told her we were taking her home

Run, Maggie run
With the heart of a rebel child
Oh, run, Maggie run
Be just as free as you are wild

A few kids later
We moved out on the farm
And she followed those kids around
Yeah, she kept them safe from harm
And she loved to chase squirrels
And playing out in the snow
She’d take off like a bullet
Man, you should have seen her go

Run, Maggie run
With the heart of a rebel child
Oh, run, Maggie run
Be just as free as you are wild

It was raining on a Monday
The day that Maggie died
She woke up and couldn’t use her legs
So I laid down by her side
She put her head on my hand
Like she’d done so many times
I told her she was a good dog
Then I told her goodbye

Run, Maggie run
With the heart of a rebel child
Oh, run, Maggie run
Be just as free as you are wild

I had a revelation
As the tractor dug a hole
I can tell you right now
That a dog has a soul
And I thought to myself
As we buried her on the hill
I never knew me a better dog
And I guess I never will

Starting Over was released last Friday (November 13th), and features his latest single, the title track.