The album was Tough All Over. Gary Allan released it on October 11, 2005, less than a year after his wife, Angela Herzberg, died by suicide at their home north of Nashville. It became the darkest record of his career, and the first one ever to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart.
The morning everything stopped
Gary Allan, whose full name is Gary Allan Herzberg, married Angela in 2001. Two years later the couple moved from Huntington Beach, California, to the Nashville area. Between them they were raising six children, three from each of their earlier marriages.
On October 25, 2004, police were called to the family’s home in Hendersonville in the early morning hours. Angela had died. Reports at the time, and Allan’s own later accounts, said she had struggled with depression and severe migraines. A year later, speaking with an Australian writer, he described what that kind of loss does to a life.
“Your whole life, all your plans come to a halt.”
He called the months that followed total devastation, and he put his career on hold.
“I can’t sing that right now”
Allan had been riding the biggest stretch of his career. His 2003 album See If I Care had given him two No. 1 singles, and the plan was to keep promoting it. After Angela’s death, the label wanted to send another song, “Drinking Dark Whiskey (Telling White Lies),” to radio. Allan said no. He later told American Songwriter his answer had been simple: he could not sing that song right then.
Friends pushed him toward the one thing that might help, which was writing. Singer and songwriter Jamie O’Hara pointed out that Allan had not written a song alone in seven years. Allan sat down and wrote “Putting My Misery on Display” by himself. It runs more than six minutes and closes the album.
Years earlier, the great Harlan Howard had told him he could write but simply had nothing to say yet. Allan later said he now wished he had less to say.
Back in the studio with his friends
Allan co-produced the album with Mark Wright, and they recorded in 2005 at Nashville studios including the Sound Kitchen and House of Gain. According to an interview he gave in Australia, four songs had already been recorded before Angela died. The later sessions were different.
“Listening to the music and being there with my friends was comforting.”
He told the Voice of America that he had to work through what happened through music. Wright wanted songs listeners would play twice. Allan wanted something raw enough to be almost brutal.
The record has no love songs. Allan said losing Angela made those feelings too painful to reach for. He had a hand in writing four of the twelve songs: “I Just Got Back from Hell” with Harley Allen, “Puttin’ Memories Away” with Matt Warren, “No Damn Good” with Jamie O’Hara and Odie Blackmon, and the solo “Putting My Misery on Display.”
The song about Angela he left off
One song never made it to the album. Allan recorded a track called “Angela, My Angel,” about her years as a flight attendant and about how she died. He later admitted that some of what he cut in those sessions went far too deep, and that money was spent recording songs he already knew would not be released. “Angela, My Angel” was one of them.
The songs other writers gave him
Most of the album was written by others, and Allan chose carefully. The title track came from Jim Lauderdale and Odie Blackmon. The first single, “Best I Ever Had,” was a Vertical Horizon song written by Matt Scannell, and one critic heard Allan’s version as a quiet tribute. It reached No. 7 on the country chart.
The second single was “Life Ain’t Always Beautiful,” a piano ballad by Cyndi Thomson, credited as Cyndi Goodman, and Tommy Lee James. It was not written about Angela, but fans heard it that way, and it climbed to No. 4 in 2006. It is still one of the songs most closely tied to his name.
A No. 1 debut, heard from Australia
Tough All Over sold 99,662 copies in its first week, the best opening of Allan’s career. It entered Billboard’s country albums chart at No. 1 and the all-genre Billboard 200 at No. 3. Allan was touring Australia when he got the news.
“I poured my soul into Tough All Over.”
The album was later certified gold, and critics ranked it among the best country records of the decade.
Seven names in small white print
The most personal words on the album are not in any song. At the bottom of the liner notes, in tiny white type, is a dedication: Angela Herzberg was “a beautiful wife and an awesome mom,” and her family misses her very much. It is signed Maggie, Dallas, Tanna, Ty, Stormy, Cole and Gary.
Just below it is information for a national suicide prevention hotline.
For a while afterward, Allan stopped doing the usual meet-and-greets before shows. He had grown tired of the constant, well-meant sympathy. He put it bluntly in a 2007 interview.
“I became the ambassador to suicide.”
He kept singing anyway. In 2026, at 58, Gary Allan is still on the road.