When Vince Gill started recording his twelfth album, Guitar Slinger, in early 2011, a series of devastating events took place, including the death of his friend and wife Amy Grant‘s turning guitarist of 16 years, Will Owsley, in 2010. On the album, Owsley co-wrote “Threaten Me with Heaven” with Gill, Grant, and musician Dillon O’Brian.

The song was initially inspired by Amy’s ex-father-in-law, who joked, “Well, what are they going to do? Threaten me with heaven?” after receiving bad news from a doctor, but the song took on a different meaning later after Owsley took his life just months after its release.

Gill later performed the song at Owsley’s funeral. He also took Owsley’s 13-year-old son as his guest to the Grammy Awards when the song was nominated for Country Song of the Year in 2011.

“Billy Paul”

The album also touches on suicide again on the track “Bill Paul,” the story of Gill’s friend, guitarist, who committed murder a year earlier and then took his life.

“It’s a true story that happened a year or so ago,” said Gill. “Billy Paul was a friend of mine that caddied out at the golf club where I play golf. We had been friends for 20 years. Unfortunately, he took a woman’s life and then took his own. I was crazy about him. I wanted to understand how it happened. He meant enough to me to write a song about him.”

Now I’ve seen you at your best and now your worst
The best of you is what I’ll remember first
We’ll read your momma’s favorite Bible verse
And then watch you ride away in that old hearse

Well I know you’re ashamed for what you done
The only choice you thought you had was just to run
Pride always gets the best of everyone
True forgiveness lies with the Father and the Son

What made you go crazy, Billy Paul?
Did you think you couldn’t face those prison walls?
Why’d you have to go and end it all?
What made you go crazy, Billy Paul?

“It’s a story song that talks about redemption and has a spiritual side to it,” adds Gill, “even as dark as it is.”

 

The song also features Gill’s then 9-year-old daughter Corrina on vocals. Now 23, Corinna released her debut album, House On Another Street, in February 2025.

“I really try to hear the voices,” said Gill of the album. “So even though it’s a 9-year-old kid [on ‘Billy Paul’], I knew what I wanted that to sound like. Corrina was really compelled by that song. It’s a very dark song about murder and suicide. I went to Amy and said, ‘This is either the worst idea I ever had, or it might be really eerie and cool.’ She said, ‘Let’s try it.’”

Gill continued, “Just hearing a little girl’s voice singing those words, ‘What made you go crazy, Billy Paul?’ is pretty haunting. It was the right voice. Not the fact that it was my kid.”

Tapping Into Merle

In a 2014 interview with SongFacts, Gill revealed that he drew on one of his biggest influences, Merle Haggard, when writing “Billy Paul.”

“There was one record I made a couple of years ago where I really got emotional because it was the first time I’ve made a record that I felt like I really seeped into Merle Haggard,” said Gill. “It was a song called ‘Billy Paul.’ The sound of the record, everything about it was Merle. It was a true story about a friend of mine that unfortunately killed a woman and then took his own life. So it’s a dark subject. But in listening to it, I said, ‘Now that sounds like something Merle Haggard would do.’”