Singer/songwriter Donovan Woods offers a bittersweet and achingly beautiful act of remembrance in “I Talk About You,” a devastating elegy to a friend that finds meaning not in closure, but in the quiet necessity of saying a loved one’s name out loud.

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Stream: “I Talk About You” – Donovan Woods

Grief doesn’t arrive with a lesson plan.

It shows up as repetition – saying the same name over and over, replaying the same moments, circling the same memories because letting them go feels like a second loss. Loving someone after they’re gone often means carrying them forward in language, in habit, in the quiet insistence that their life still matters. “I Talk About You,” Donovan Woods’ devastating new single, lives in that space – not as a tribute polished by time, but as grief caught mid-sentence, raw and unfiltered, spoken aloud because silence would hurt more.

The song opens with a line so plain it feels almost dangerous in its honesty: “I talk about you / To anybody who’s gonna listen.” There’s no metaphor to hide behind, no poetic sleight of hand. Woods names exactly what grief does to us – how it spills into conversations uninvited, how it refuses decorum, how it demands witness. The song doesn’t ask permission to exist. It simply tells the truth: When you lose someone you love, you talk about them because you have to.

I talk about you
To anybody who’s gonna listen
Your life may be through
But I’m gonna go on living
All your pill bottles
Had two kinds of pills in them
I talk about you
To anybody who’s gonna listen

Released January 21, “I Talk About You” is the first song shared from Woods’ upcoming EP Squander Your Gifts, out February 27. The five-song collection is largely written for and about his late friend and longtime writing partner Abe Stoklasa, who passed away unexpectedly in 2023. It marks Woods’ first new original music since 2024’s Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now – and emotionally, it feels like a rupture from the very first note.

Musically, the song is restrained to the point of reverence. Acoustic guitar, soft percussion, and subtle Celtic instrumentation – including whistle flute, mandolin, and accordion played by Aaron Collis – create a soundscape that feels almost ceremonial. The influence of Irish funeral music is intentional. Woods cites the funeral of Shane MacGowan as a formative moment in the song’s creation – a performance where grief wasn’t muted or sanitized, but sung fully, fiercely, and without apology. “It was exactly what I needed to feel,” he says. “I hope to god my funeral is like that.” That spirit lives here – grief not as whisper, but as offering.

What makes “I Talk About You” so shattering is its refusal to soften regret. Woods doesn’t present himself as a narrator who has made peace. He confesses what many people are too afraid to admit aloud – that relationships fracture, that pride interferes, that timing fails us. “I did nothing / I’ve never really done a thing for anyone,” he sings, naming guilt without defense. The song doesn’t seek absolution. It simply bears the weight of truth and lets it stand.

Woods explains that the opening lyric came from lived behavior, not intention. After Abe’s death, he found himself bringing him up constantly – to strangers, to acquaintances, to anyone who would listen. “Probably for too long,” he admits. It wasn’t performative. It was survival. Saying Abe’s name became a way of keeping him present, of refusing the finality of silence. In that way, the song becomes both memory and protest – against forgetting, against moving on too quickly, against pretending love ends when life does.

This directness has long been Woods’ greatest strength as a songwriter.

Across a career that bridges folk, country, and pop, he’s built a reputation for emotional clarity – for writing songs that don’t flinch from discomfort. Beyond his own catalog, he’s written for artists like Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Charles Kelley, Ben Platt, and more. But “I Talk About You” feels different. It isn’t crafted for radio or resonance. It’s written because it had to be.

I thought so much of you
Though we had our share of friction
AC set to 62
Only one kind of food in the kitchen
And all your sweetness
Had a little bit of anger in it
I talk about you
To anybody who’s gonna listen

That urgency shapes Squander Your Gifts as a whole. Woods describes going through a long period where he could only write about Abe – not out of strategy, but necessity. “I didn’t set out to do it,” he says. “I just couldn’t write about anything else.” While the EP isn’t exclusively about his late friend, it’s undeniably shaped by loss. Dedicating the collection felt less like a choice than an obligation – a way to honor someone who loved music deeply, who believed in Woods’ voice, and who helped shape the songwriter he became.

There’s tenderness, too, in how Woods speaks about Abe – a man who was both difficult and deeply loving, stubborn and childlike, brilliant and frustrating. He doesn’t mythologize him into perfection. He lets him be human. That honesty is part of what makes the song resonate so widely. “I’m amazed by how specificity resonates with universality,” Woods reflects, noting how listeners have found their own grief inside this very personal story. The song may be about Abe, but its emotional truth belongs to anyone who has ever loved and lost. “People telling me they relate to the song, or in fact feel like it could be about their experience of grief is, as always, surprising and heartening to me. I felt as though I was writing the song only for me. I had no intention of writing something that anyone else could possibly care about. I wrote so many songs with Abe that I sing and hear every day. They all make me think of him. I can hear his melodic choices and recall which lines he came up with. When I miss him, I’ll probably sing those songs. I needed to write this one to grieve.”

“I Talk About You” doesn’t offer closure. It doesn’t suggest that time heals all wounds. Instead, it honors the ongoing relationship we have with the dead – the way they continue to live inside our speech, our memory, our daily rituals. Woods hopes listeners find the song useful – something that helps them cry, or drive, or sit with what hurts. That humility matters. The song isn’t here to teach. It’s here to accompany.

In the end, “I Talk About You” feels less like a performance than an act of devotion – a refusal to let silence have the last word.

It carries memory with grace, guilt with honesty, and love with humility. In giving voice to his grief, Donovan Woods reminds us of something essential: That talking about the people we’ve lost is not weakness, but proof that they mattered – and that they still do.

Donovan Woods recently sat down with Atwood Magazine to talk about the grief, guilt, and grace behind “I Talk About You” – and what it’s meant to write through loss. Read our intimate conversation below, and spend some time with this achingly beautiful song wherever you stream music.

Squander Your Gifts is out February 27 via Meant Well / Warner Music Canada.

I think about you
Both your eyes wide open
All alone in your bedroom
A week before anybody noticed
And I did nothing
I’ve never really done a thing for anyone
I talk about you
To anybody who’s gonna listen

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Stream: “I Talk About You” – Donovan Woods

A CONVERSATION WITH DONOVAN WOODS

Donovan Woods: Soon after Abe died, and I was sick with grief and guilt, the Irish songwriter Shane MacGowan also died. I watched clips of MacGowan’s funeral online. The funeral essentially becomes a concert. Glen Hansard, the surviving members of The Pogues, Shane’s band, played “Fairytale of New York” with Lisa O’Neill. Glen opens the song solo, the long intro part. The rest of the musicians are still very gracefully setting up their microphone stands and tuning up. When they all enter the song it is a moment of such grace and power that I cry every time I watch it. It’s a hard, thorough, all-out performance. No one censors a word, as you may know, the song includes language like, “You’re an old slut on junk.” People begin to dance in the cathedral. It was exactly what I needed to feel. I hope to god my funeral is like that. It reminded me to write about Abe directly and sharply and I sat down and tried to do that. I couldn’t wait around for some grand perspective, in other words. It wasn’t coming. Shane MacGowan’s funeral also inspired the instrumentation on the record. Newfoundland’s Aaron Collis plays a lot of traditional Celtic instruments on all the songs, including the flute, mandolin and accordion on this one.

Donovan Woods: They were just very plainly true. That’s what I found myself doing. Bringing Abe up in every conversation, and talking about him, probably for too long, to people who didn’t even know him. I hadn’t spoken about him for months before his passing. He wasn’t speaking to me at the time because I had posted a congratulations to a friend who wrote a song for a popular country act that Abe was not fond of. He had tried to reach out once but I was mad too, and I didn’t answer. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.

Donovan Woods: As always, I’m amazed by how specificity resonates with universality. People telling me they relate to the song, or in fact feel like it could be about their experience of grief is, as always, surprising and heartening to me. I felt as though I was writing the song only for me. I had no intention of writing something that anyone else could possibly care about. I wrote so many songs with Abe that I sing and hear every day. They all make me think of him. I can hear his melodic choices and recall which lines he came up with. When I miss him, I’ll probably sing those songs. I needed to write this one to grieve.

Donovan Woods: It’s not all entirely about Abe, but most of it is. One is a song that I think he just would’ve liked, and it’s about me. I’m not really sure what it feels like to eulogize him through song. I worry that his family won’t like it. Or, that I’m taking too much ownership of his memory because I have a platform. I only mean to say that I loved him and I’m lucky I got to know him. I didn’t set out to do it, I just couldn’t write about anything else for a long stretch of time. Thinking about it now, it’s likely the best way to honour him because Abe liked music way more than I do. He had a mural of Aretha Franklin on the wall of his kitchen for god’s sake.

Donovan Woods: He was a difficult guy, and a very sweet, loving guy. I’m certain there are people who knew him that didn’t experience his sweet and loving side. When he was angry, he was stubborn and vengeful and when he was kind, he was goofy like a little kid. An image of him that’s burned into my mind is, after not seeing him for about half a year during which he had gotten extremely into physical fitness, I met him for dinner at a place in East Nashville called Lockeland Table. From 100 meters down the street I watched him get out of his white Jaguar, and he looked like The Incredible Hulk. He had made himself enormous. He looked like a whole new guy. I said, “Holy shit, dude, is that you?,” and he said, very genuinely curious, “Oh, do I look different?”

Donovan Woods: It’s the first song and it’s probably the most direct statement of grief.

Donovan Woods: I hope people find it useful in their lives. Maybe it helps them cry or drive to work. What I got out of creating it is the absolute joy of writing, which is all I want. Trying to distill a feeling into something that is a permanent record, and maybe beautiful, is all my brain likes to do.

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:: stream/purchase Squander Your Gifts here ::

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