Let Her Go
"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.
For other uses, see Let Her Go (disambiguation)."Let Her Go"
24 July 2012
2011
Linear Recording, Sydney
- 4:12 (album version)
- 3:37 (radio edit)
- Embassy of Music
- Black Crow Records
- Nettwerk
- Mike Rosenberg
- Chris Vallejo
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.[1][2] 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.[3][4]
Music video[edit]
The music video was uploaded on the day after the single, directed and produced by the Australian video artist Dave Jensen and Tavic.[29] 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 of all time on the site.[30]
Cover versions[edit]
In 2013, Jasmine Thompson released a cover version.
British singer Birdy recorded a cover version called "Let Him Go" in 2013 on BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge.[31]
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).[32]
Italian pianist Costantino Carrara published a piano arrangement of this song on 6 December 2013, that quickly became the most popular Let Her Go piano cover with more than 20 million views.[33]
In August 2014, Glen Templeton made a country cover of the song.[34]
American trance singer JES released her cover version of the song titled "Let Him Go" in 2019.[35]
The song is sampled heavily in Central Cee's 2022 single "Let Go".[36]
In popular culture[edit]
"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.[37] 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.[38]