Eagles – After the Thrill Is Gone

About The Song

“After the Thrill Is Gone” is a rock ballad written by Don Henley and Glenn Frey, recorded by the Eagles for their fourth album, One of These Nights, released on June 10, 1975, by Asylum Records. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and was certified 4x platinum by the RIAA for four million US sales. The song was not released as a single.

Recorded in early 1975 at The Record Plant in Los Angeles and Criteria Studios in Miami, the track was produced by Bill Szymczyk. It features Glenn Frey on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, Don Henley on backing vocals and drums, Don Felder on lead guitar, Bernie Leadon on pedal steel guitar, and Randy Meisner on bass.
The lyrics address the fading excitement in a relationship, set to a slow, country-influenced arrangement. Henley and Frey wrote it during band tensions, reflecting personal and professional exhaustion, as Frey stated in a 1975 Rolling Stone interview. The track was completed in one day with minimal takes, per Rhino’s Eagles session notes.

The Eagles, formed in Los Angeles in 1971, recorded the song amid a shift from country-rock to a more polished sound. It was performed live during their 1975–1976 world tour, including a March 1976 show at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, documented in bootlegs. John Anderson covered it in 1981 for his album I Just Came Home to Count the Memories. The song appeared in the 2003 documentary History of the Eagles.

Video

Lyric

Same dances in the same old shoes
Some habits that you just can’t lose
There’s no telling what a man might use
After the thrill is gone

The flame rises but it soon descends
Empty pages and a frozen pen
You’re not quite lovers and you’re not quite friends
After the thrill is gone, oh
After the thrill is gone

What can you do when your dreams come true
And it’s not quite like you planned?
What have you done to be losing the one
You held it so tight in your hand

Time passes and you must move on
Half the distance takes you twice as long
So you keep on singing for the sake of the song
After the thrill is gone

You’re afraid you might fall out of fashion
And you’re feeling cold and small
Any kind of love without passion
That ain’t no kind of lovin’ at all

Same dances in the same old shoes
You get too careful with the steps you choose
You don’t care about winning but you don’t want to lose
After the thrill is gone
After the thrill is gone
After the thrill is gone, oh
After the thrill is gone