Nothing brings two people together quite like a mutual irritation, and the scathing Eagles song Don Henley and Glenn Frey wrote about celebrity culture is certainly no exception. “Get Over It” was the first song the drummer and guitarist wrote together following the Eagles’ 14-year-long breakup.
The song achieved moderate commercial success, peaking at No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 4 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks in 1994. While it might not be one of the Eagles’ most distinctive tracks of all time, it certainly marked a momentous milestone within the band.
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The Scathing Eagles Song About Toxic Celebrity Culture
If there was any confusion as to what the Eagles’ 1994 track “Get Over It” was about, songwriters Don Henley and Glenn Frey made sure to address it from the first verse. I turn on the tube and what do I see? A whole lot of people crying, ‘Don’t blame me.’ They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else, spend all their time feeling sorry for themselves. Victim of this, victim of that, your momma’s too think, and your daddy’s too fat.
Subtle? No. To the point? Definitely. In case you needed any reassurance of the attitude the Eagles were personifying in this uptempo rock song, the chorus hammers their point home. Get over it, get over it, all this whining and crying and pitching a fit.
After realizing they both shared a mutual disdain for what Frey called “tabloid television,” the decision to write a song about it seemed like the obvious next step. “I was so tired of professional victims everywhere you looked all over the media,” Frey recalled in a 2003 interview with Cameron Crowe. “Don said, ‘I have a title: “Get Over It.” I said, ‘That’s a song. Let’s write it!’ We got together at his place up the coast and wrote it.”
A Shared Rant Marked A Pivotal Turning Point For Glenn Frey and Don Henley
The Eagles’ 1980 breakup came on the heels of growing animosity between band members, particularly Glenn Frey and Don Felder. (When you start threatening to beat each other up in the middle of a set, that seems like a pretty clear indication that a break is in order.) Following the band’s split, the musicians pursued solo careers with varying degrees of success.
In the 14 years between the initial breakup and their 1994 reunion, Don Henley frequently said the Eagles would only get back together “when hell freezes over.” So, when that long-awaited reunion finally happened, they opted to name their comeback record Hell Freezes Over. “Get Over It” was a lead single off the record in addition to “Love Will Keep Us Alive.”
While it’s unclear just how conscious the irony of their album and song titles were following a 14-year-long separation, Hell Freezes Over marked a pivotal turning point in the Eagles. Not only could these musicians finally be in the same room with one another again. But even more importantly, they could write together again. This milestone isn’t lost on Frey and Henley.
“The best thing about [“Get Over It”] is that it got Glenn and I in a room together again after 14 years,” Henley told Cameron Crowe. “We created something as a team, even if it wasn’t the best thing we ever wrote.” Frey shared similar sentiments, telling Crowe, “It was the song that proved to us that we could write together. Let’s just say that I was less than confident that Don and I could get back in a room together and get through a piece of work. For that reason, it’s an important song to me.”
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