When You Say Nothing at All

1988 single by Keith Whitley

"When You Say Nothing at All" is a country song written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz. It was a hit song for four different performers: Keith Whitley, who took it to the top of the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart on December 24, 1988; Alison Krauss & Union Station, whose version was their first solo top 10 country hit in 1995; Irish singer Frances Black, whose 1996 version became her third Irish top 10 single and brought the song to the attention of Irish pop singer Ronan Keating, whose 1999 version was his first solo single and a number one hit in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand.

Songwriters Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz came up with "When You Say Nothing at All" at the end of an otherwise unproductive day. Strumming a guitar, trying to write their next song, they were coming up empty. "As we tried to find another way to say nothing, we came up with the song", Overstreet later told author Ace Collins. They thought the song was OK, but nothing special. When Keith Whitley heard it, he loved it, and was not going to let it get away.

RCA released "When You Say Nothing at All" as the follow up single to the title song of Whitley's Don't Close Your Eyes album. The former song already had hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, his first chart topper after three prior singles made the top 10. "When You Say Nothing at All" entered the Hot Country Singles chart on September 17, 1988, at No. 61, and gradually rose to the top, where it stayed for two weeks at the end of the year. It was sung by Sara Evans on the show. As of February 2015, the song has sold 599,000 digital copies in the US after it became available for download.

In 1994, bluegrass music group Alison Krauss & Union Station covered the song for a tribute album to Whitley titled Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album. After this cover began to receive unsolicited airplay, BNA Records, the label that had released the album, issued it to radio in January 1995. That version, also featured on Krauss' compilation Now That I've Found You: A Collection, peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, and a commercial single reached No. 2 on the same magazine's Hot Country Singles Sales chart. Mike Cromwell, then the production director at WMIL FM in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, concocted a duet merging elements of the Alison Krauss & Union Station version with Whitley's original hit version. The "duet" garnered national attention, and it spread from at least Philadelphia to Albuquerque. This "duet" was however never officially serviced to radio and has never been available commercially. The Alison Krauss & Union Station recording won the 1995 CMA award for "Single of the Year". It has sold 468,000 digital downloads as of May 2017.

"When You Say Nothing At All" is the opening track on Frances Black's third solo album, The Smile on Your Face (1996), the title of the album being a lyric from this song. Released in August 1996 as the album's first single, this single became her third to reach the Irish top 10, peaking at number eight during an 11 week run in the top 30.

"When You Say Nothing at All" was released as the debut solo single by Irish singer songwriter Ronan Keating. The song was recorded for the soundtrack to the film Notting Hill and also appeared on Keating's debut solo album, Ronan. This cover was released on July 26, 1999, in the United Kingdom. It peaked at number one in the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand. The single is certified double platinum in the UK and platinum in Australia, Denmark, and Sweden. In February 2003, Keating re recorded the song as a duet with Mexican singer Paulina Rubio in Spanglish, which was released in Spain, Mexico, and Latin America (excluding Brazil) to promote Keating's second studio album, Destination. In Brazil, Ronan chose the Brazilian singer Deborah Blando to re record the song in English and English Portuguese for the 10 Years Of Hits album exclusive for that country. A music video was recorded for this version with Blando.

Daily Record wrote that Keating "sounds like Marti Pellow on this drippy ballad." The Spanish website Jenesaispop described the Spanglish version as one of the most "squeaky" bilingual collaboration, while Victor González of GQ Spain praised the collaboration as "great" in an article of "unusual collaborations".