In November, Chris Stapleton released his latest album, Starting Over. The title track was the only single released from the album, but one of the highlights is “When I’m With You,” which Stapleton brought to The Tonight Show yesterday.
In his pre-taped performance, Stapleton is joined by his band, which includes his wife Morgane Stapleton, who provided backing vocals on many of the songs from Starting Over. Together, they all laze their way through the country ballad that touches on topics of aging.
Stapleton previously said of the song, “‘When I’m With You’ started the day I turned 40. The first line is, ‘I’m 40 years old, and it looks like the end of the rainbow ain’t no pot of gold.’ Age is just an arbitrary number in some ways. The day before you turn 40 is really no different than the day you’re 40, but somehow that number gets into your head. And I think it got in my head that day, and I started trying to be Merle Haggard. I was being reflective. That song took a minute to write. I had different versions of it, which is not something that I do very often, taking that much time. It was probably a year before I fully got happy with that song. But it came ’round. That song, for me, is what I like to hear out of country music.”
Watch Stapleton perform “When I’m With You’ on Fallon above.
