About The Song
Patty Loveless released “She Drew a Broken Heart” as a single on December 21, 1996. It came from her album *The Trouble with the Truth*, which Epic Records put out on January 23 of that year. The track sits as the eighth song on the record. Jon McElroy and Ned McElroy wrote it. Emory Gordy Jr. produced the cut, which runs just under three minutes.
The story is straightforward. A woman has had enough of a man who lies and cheats. She packs up, buys a discounted ticket for the midnight train, and leaves her message in lipstick on his satin sheets. She draws a broken heart, torn down the middle in a red jagged line, and puts his name inside it. Revlon Rose is the shade she uses. The song makes clear that no amount of pleading will bring her back. The buck stops with him.
Deborah Evans Price reviewed the single for *Billboard*. She called it a feisty uptempo tune about a woman whose goodbye note is written in lipstick on her ex-lover’s satin sheets. She noted the fiddle and the sass in Loveless’s voice, predicting country radio would take to it right away.
The song spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. It peaked at number four during the week of March 15, 1997. In Canada it reached number two on the RPM Country Tracks chart. On the 1997 year-end lists it came in at number 35 in the United States and number 46 in Canada.
The McElroy brothers had other country cuts to their names. Jon later co-wrote Neal McCoy’s “The Shake,” which hit the top five the same year this single was climbing the charts. Their work here fits the sharp-edged, clear-eyed material that filled *The Trouble with the Truth*. The album itself earned platinum certification and drew Album of the Year nominations from both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association.
Years later the song surfaced again in an unexpected place. In October 2023, during Patty Loveless’s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Bob Seger walked onstage at the CMA Theater in Nashville and sang it. It was his first public performance since 2019. Loveless later said the appearance took her by complete surprise. The two had worked together before; Seger had traveled to her home in Georgia to record the duet “The Answer’s in the Question” for his 2006 album *Face the Promise*.
The image of the lipstick drawing stuck with listeners. It is specific enough to feel like a scene from a particular bedroom on a particular night, yet common enough that anyone who has watched a relationship end could picture it. The train ticket detail adds a practical note: she is leaving with what she can afford, and she is leaving for good.
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Lyric
You should have seen it coming, now it’s too late
She bought the half-price ticket on the midnight train
You wouldn’t understand ’cause you lie and cheat
So she wrote it out in lipstick on your satin sheets
She drew a broken heart
She drew a broken heart
Torn right down the middle in a red jagged line
She drew a broken heart and put your name inside
She had to draw you a picture to make it sink in
Revlon Rose was her poison pin
For God’s gift to women you ain’t got a clue
That red broken heart belongs to you
She drew a broken heart
She drew a broken heart
It ain’t no Cupid’s Arrow, it ain’t no Valentine
She drew a broken heart and put your name inside
No lovesick word’s gonna bring her back
The buck stops here, buddy, that’s a fact
No matter who’s right, no matter who’s wrong
Anyway you cut it, she’s gone
She drew a broken heart
She drew a broken heart
Torn right down the middle in a red jagged line
She drew a broken heart and put your name inside