Messiest Country Music Splits: Shania and Mutt, Kelly and Brandon, More

Achy breaky heart! Some of country music’s greatest songs are about heartbreak — and the relationships that inspired them can be just as dramatic.

Shania Twain learned firsthand that breakups are hard when her husband of 15 years, Robert “Mutt” Lange, had an affair with her former personal assistant, Marie-Anne Thiébaud, in May 2008. The pair called it quits as a result of the infidelity — and the “You’re Still the One” songstress later put her pain into her music.

“If I’m really angry, I’ll say ‘f—k’ a lot. And, if I’m writing, that word will be in every line,” Twain told The Guardian in April 2018 of her writing process for 2017’s Now. “There was one song I wrote about my cheating friend and there was a lot of f—ks in there. I hated her, so that’s the best word to use when you hate somebody.”

The “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” singer confessed: “I do really nasty things in my dreams to her. I’m always cutting her hair or shaving it off.” While Twain found love with Marie-Anne’s now ex-husband, Frédéric Thiébaud, her heartache from the affair was still apparent in her writing.

“Found it in his closet / Right behind the lies / I wish I never saw it / The secret in his eyes / Poor, poor me,” the Canada native sings on Now’s “Poor Me.” “He never told me how long I’d been living in the dark / No one turned the light on / I fell and broke my heart.”

Kelsea Ballerini is another artist who turned her pain into poetry after splitting from her now ex-husband, Morgan Evans, in August 2022.

“And now you’re saying that you’re lost / And that’s lost on me,” Ballerini sings on “Blindsided,” which came out in February 2023 as a response to the Aussie crooner’s own breakup track. “Years of sitting across from me in therapy / I know the truth is hard to hear, but it wasn’t hard to find / Baby, were you blindsided or were you just blind?”

In “Penthouse,” the Tennessee native details her divorce from Evans, which was finalized in November 2022. She recalls selling their joint home: “It hurts putting s—t in a box / And now we don’t talk / And it stings rolling up the welcome mat / Knowing you got half,” the lyrics read. “I kissed someone new last night / But now I don’t know where you’re sleeping, baby / We got along real nice, until I wanted out, now I know you hate me.”

Ahead of their divorce, Ballerini and Evans dealt with several “issues” in their marriage a source exclusively told Us Weekly in March 2023 — including their difference of opinion on having children.

“Their relationship was always an emotional roller-coaster,” the insider told Us at the time, noting that the pair’s “intense romance” had periods of “friction, tension and toxicity.”

According to the source, the “Day Drunk” crooner had been “ready for a long time” to become a father, but Ballerini wasn’t on the same page. “They had been having issues, relating to each other and trouble being kind to each other, but the disagreement over kids was the nail in the coffin,” the insider shared.

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