About The Song
“Walkaway Joe” is a song written by Vince Melamed and Greg Barnhill, and recorded by American country music singer Trisha Yearwood, with background vocals from Don Henley of the Eagles. It was released in November 1992 as the second single from her album Hearts in Armor. The song reached number 2 on the U.S. Billboard country charts. Matthew McConaughey appears as the male lead in the music video.
“Walkaway Joe” is a mid-tempo ballad describing a failed relationship initiated by an over-eager 17-year-old girl (“Such are the dreams of an average Jane / Ninety miles an hour down lovers’ lane”) and an uninterested male (presumably embarking on a life of crime, as evidenced in the song’s second verse), or “Walkaway Joe.”
After a performance on The Tonight Show, Yearwood met Don Henley of the Eagles and, after being invited to sing on her second album, he traveled to Nashville, Tennessee and recorded background vocals for the song.
Matthew McConaughey appears in the music video.
The song appeared in the CBS show Touched by an Angel. Episode 512 of the show entitled “Fool For Love” was based on the song.
Thom Jurek described the song favorably in his review of Hearts in Armor, saying, “Yearwood’s telling the story she tells best, working-class love gone bad.”[2] In a review of Yearwood’s 1997 greatest-hits package (Songbook) A Collection of Hits, Gordon Ely of the Richmond Times said, “It’s not just a great song. It’s memorable and only a shade shy of pure poetry. And it will be with us for a long time.”
The song was nominated for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female at the 1994 Grammy Awards.
“Walkaway Joe” debuted at number 60 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of November 7, 1992.
Video
Lyrics
Mama told her baby, “Girl, take it real slow”
Girl told her mama, “Hey, I really gotta go
He’s waitin’ in the car”
Mama said, “Girl, you won’t get far”
Thus are the dreams of an average Jane
Ninety miles an hour down a lover’s lane
On a tank of dreams
Oh, if she could have only seen
But fates got cards that it don’t wanna show
And that boy’s just a walkaway Joe
Born to be a leaver, tell you from the word “go”
Destined to deceive her, he’s the wrong kind of paradise
She’s gonna know it in a matter of time
That boy’s just a walkaway Joe
Now just a little while into Abilene
Pulls into a station and he robs it clean
She’s waitin’ in the car
Underneath the Texaco star
She only wanted love, never bargained for this
She can’t help but love him for the way he is
She’s only seventeen
And there ain’t no reasoning
So she’ll ride this ride as far as it can go
‘Cause that boy’s just a walkaway Joe
Born to be a leaver, tell you from the word “go”
Destined to deceive her, he’s the wrong kind of paradise
She’s gonna know it in a matter of time
That boy’s just a walkaway Joe
Somewhere in a roadside motel room
Alone in the silence she wakes up too soon and reaches for his arms
But she’ll just keep reachin’ on
‘Cause the cold hard truth revealed what it had known
That boy was just a walkaway Joe
Born to be a leaver, tell you from the word “go”
Destined to deceive her, he’s the wrong kind of paradise
But it was just another lesson in life
That boy was a walkaway Joe
All he was was a walkaway Joe
Ooh, walkaway Joe
He was a walkaway Joe