Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license.
Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat.
We can research this topic together.
"Let Her Go" is a song recorded by English singer-songwriter Passenger. It was recorded at Sydney's Linear Recording and co-produced by Passenger (as Mike Rosenberg) and Chris Vallejo. The recording features Australian musicians Stu Larsen, Georgia Mooney, Stu Hunter, Cameron Undy, and Glenn Wilson. "Let Her Go" was released on 24 July 2012 as the second single from Passenger's fourth album, All the Little Lights.
The song became a sleeper hit, achieving international success and topping the charts in many countries around the world. As of July 2014, it has sold over one million digital copies in the UK, and over four million in the US. In 2014, the song was nominated for the Brit Award for British Single of the Year, and won Passenger the British Academy's Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Work.
The lyrics of the song are poetic and melancholic, describing the regrets associated with ending a relationship. The chorus describes situations in which one does not appreciate what he or she has until it is gone, and relates this to love. The verses give detailed scenes involving a heartbroken man dealing with his breakup.
"Let Her Go" was released in July 2012 as the second single from Passenger's third album All the Little Lights. The song became a hit first in the Netherlands after Dave, a Dutch fan, e-mailed Passenger expressing his wish to introduce the song to some Dutch radio stations, claiming it could be a hit there. This resulted in the song trending on Dutch stations and finding enormous commercial success with the Dutch public. The song reached number two in the Dutch Top 40 in November 2012, spending a total of four non-consecutive weeks at that position. The next month that year, it topped at number one.
The music video was uploaded on the day after the single, directed and produced by the Australian video artist Dave Jensen and Tavic. It shows the stage being prepared for a Passenger concert, with footage of Passenger performance with his backing band and shots of the audience present reacting.
As of March 2024, the video has received over 3.6 billion views on the video-sharing website YouTube, making it the 27th most viewed video ever on the site.
An unreleased acoustic version of the song was donated to support college radio in the USA on the 2013 College Radio Day Vol. 2 album. The song was limited to being on only the CD version of the album (only 1,500 copies have been pressed).
In August 2014, Glen Templeton made a country cover of the song.
American trance singer JES released her cover version of the song titled "Let Him Go" in 2019.
"Let Her Go" was used in a Budweiser commercial shown during Super Bowl XLVIII entitled "Puppy Love", which showed the friendship between a Labrador Retriever puppy and one of the Budweiser Clydesdales. It was used also in the season 7 finale of the Canadian television show Heartland as the send-off song and in "500 Years of Solitude", the 100th episode of The Vampire Diaries.
Bluegrass band the Travelin' McCourys recorded the song at a Nashville studio, the Butcher Shoppe releasing the version on 13 January 2017.
Sales figures based on certification alone. Shipments figures based on certification alone. Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. Streaming-only figures based on certification alone.
Passenger live at Pinkpop 2013 - FULL SHOW - Passenger says during the Pinkpop concert in Holland after singing "Let Her Go": "You know, I wrote that song two-and-a-half years ago and put it on an album and we released the album, and for nine months, nothing happened. No one gave a shit. It's funny, we were kind of working on the next record, I'm thinking "okay cool, no problem". And this guy called Dave from Holland gave us an e-mail and he said: Look, I've heard this song "Let Her Go" and I want to take it to radio here because I think here in the Netherlands it could really work and could do something. So we're like "okay mate, cool, do your thing, knock yourself out". Within two weeks, I think it got to number one and that's kind of what started this whole crazy fucking thing. Firstly, I'd like to thank Dave because without Dave I don't think I'd be here at all. And secondly, I want to thank you guys just for supporting me and my music before anybody else did really. So a massive, massive thank you. "Let Her Go" is your song, thank you very very much".
^ "ČNS IFPI" (in Czech). Hitparáda – Radio Top 100 Oficiální. IFPI Czech Republic. Note: Select 25. týden 2013 in the date selector. Retrieved 4 June 2014.
"ČNS IFPI" (in Czech). Hitparáda – Digital Top 100 Oficiální. IFPI Czech Republic. Note: Select 19. týden 2014 in the date selector. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
"Media Forest – Weekly Charts. Media Forest. 30 September 2013. Retrieved 2 July 2018. Note: Romanian and international positions are rendered together by the number of plays before resulting an overall chart.
"Media Forest – Weekly Charts. Media Forest. 4 November 2013. Retrieved 3 July 2018. Note: Select 'Songs – TV'. Romanian and international positions are rendered together by the number of plays before resulting an overall chart.
"ČNS IFPI" (in Slovak). Hitparáda – Singles Digital Top 100 Oficiálna. IFPI Czech Republic. Note: Select SINGLES DIGITAL - TOP 100 and insert 201428 into search. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
