If Tomorrow Never Comes
1989 single by Garth Brooks

"If Tomorrow Never Comes" is a song by American country music artist Garth Brooks. Written by Garth Brooks and Kent Blazy, it was released in August 1989 as the second single from his self-titled debut album. The track was his first number-one single on the US Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, and Garth refers to it as his signature song. "If Tomorrow Never Comes" was named Favorite Country Single in the American Music Awards of 1991.
The song subsequently became one of Brooks' most popular songs for other artists to cover. In 2002, Irish singer Ronan Keating released a version that reached number one in the United Kingdom and three other countries, and it became a top-five hit in several additional territories.
Content
This is the first country love song released by Garth Brooks. A man lies awake at night, thinking what would happen in his love's mind if he were to die the next day. The first line in the chorus reads: "If tomorrow never comes, will she know how much I love her?" He goes on to compare this situation with his own lost loved ones, and how he made a promise to say each day how much she means to him. The song begins with a soft guitar solo and gradually builds up to a more orchestrated accompaniment.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “If Tomorrow Never Comes” is 1989 single by Garth Brooks. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tomorrow, Never and Comes, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1989 single by Garth Brooks” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5990769. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1991 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “If Tomorrow Never Comes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.