What Can I Do With This Broken Heart

England Dan & John Ford Coley and the Late-Career Entry "What Can I Do With This Broken Heart"

By the autumn of 1979, England Dan & John Ford Coley occupied an unusual position in American popular music. The Texas-born duo of Dan Seals and John Ford Coley had spent the middle portion of the decade establishing themselves as reliable hitmakers in the soft rock and adult contemporary mold, scoring significant chart success with songs like "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" in 1976 and "Nights Are Forever Without You" that same year. As the decade closed, however, the commercial landscape had shifted considerably, and the duo's final collaborative entries on the Hot 100 reflected both the durability of their audience and the changing tastes that were gradually eroding the market dominance of melodic soft rock.

"What Can I Do With This Broken Heart" entered the Billboard Hot 100 on October 27, 1979, debuting at position 78. The single climbed steadily through the autumn weeks: 67, then 56, then 53, then 51, reaching its peak position of 50 during the week of December 1, 1979. The chart run covered six weeks in total. The peak of 50 positioned the single in the middle of the chart, characteristic of a track that found its intended audience without achieving the crossover pop breakthrough that the duo's best-known singles had managed earlier in the decade.

The production of the record reflected the prevailing aesthetic of late 1970s adult contemporary music, a format that had grown substantially in commercial importance as AM radio demographics matured and station programmers sought material that appealed to listeners who had grown up with the melodic pop and folk-rock of the late 1960s. Big Tree Records, the Atlantic-distributed imprint that had been home to much of the duo's best-known work, was the vehicle through which their recordings reached radio programmers and retail outlets. The label had been instrumental in developing the soft rock format as a commercial category, and England Dan and John Ford Coley were among its defining acts.

Dan Seals and John Ford Coley had met in Texas during their teenage years and had been performing together in various configurations since the early 1970s. Their vocal blend, which combined Seals's warmer, slightly weathered tone with Coley's complementary phrasing, had been the defining characteristic of their commercial appeal. The formula was not technically complex, but it was executed with a consistency and a genuine sense of melodic craft that distinguished their best work from the more generic entries in the soft rock catalog.

The late 1970s were a complicated period for acts whose primary appeal was melodic and adult-oriented. The rise of disco had reshaped radio programming and label priorities from roughly 1976 onward, and while soft rock retained a substantial listening audience, it occupied a somewhat defensive position in the broader commercial conversation. The arrival of new wave and early post-punk sounds in the American mainstream, beginning in earnest in 1979, further complicated the landscape that melodic soft rock acts were navigating. "What Can I Do With This Broken Heart" appeared at precisely the moment when these competing forces were creating maximum uncertainty about which directions popular music would pursue into the new decade.

The duo would release additional material before formally parting ways in the early 1980s. Dan Seals went on to achieve considerable success as a country artist under the name Dan Seals, scoring numerous number-one hits on the country charts during the mid-1980s. John Ford Coley continued to perform and record in various contexts. The partnership, taken as a whole, had lasted through a remarkably productive period in American popular music, and their ability to maintain chart presence into 1979 with a record like "What Can I Do With This Broken Heart" demonstrated the genuine loyalty of their adult contemporary audience.

Radio promotion for the single concentrated on the adult contemporary format, which by 1979 had developed its own distinct programming infrastructure with dedicated chart tracking by Billboard and other industry publications. This format's audience was notably consistent in its listening habits and its willingness to support acts whose commercial peak had passed but whose craftsmanship remained evident. The adult contemporary chart provided a parallel commercial structure that allowed acts like England Dan and John Ford Coley to remain commercially viable even as the Hot 100's upper reaches became increasingly competitive and stylistically diverse.

The song itself fit neatly within the duo's established emotional register, addressing heartbreak and loss with the melodic accessibility and careful production polish that their audience expected. The title's questioning construction invited listener identification by foregrounding a feeling of helplessness in the face of romantic loss, a universally legible emotional state that translated effectively across the radio formats where the single was being promoted. In the context of a career marked by consistent craftsmanship and genuine commercial achievement, the single stands as a late-period document of a partnership approaching its natural conclusion with its artistic standards intact.