This song was my first real “break” in barbershop arranging. A quartet from my chapter, Momma’s Boys (now known as The Kelly Brothers) didn’t laugh at me when I approached them and asked if I could arrange something for them. They were the best quartet I had any sort of personal connection to, so I knew I had to do something worthy of them. My wife heard Meghan Trainor’s hit “Like I’m Gonna Lose You” on the radio one day and suggested it as a potential barbershop arrangement. I started developing some ideas, leaning heavily on a couple of Aaron Dale arrangements in 12/8 time. I took it to Harmony University where several people – notably Wayne Grimmer – helped me make it better. (The hardest part was harmonizing the prominent non-chord tones in the bendy melody on “like I’m sayin’ goodbye” and “when we’ll run out of time” – the solution was to not harmonize them at all!)
I’ll never forget the Evergreen District convention in October 2016, when Momma’s Boys debuted it. It was the first time one of my arrangements had been performed in public. Up till that point, I’d only really heard the song in my head, or on my keyboard. Getting a full live performance by a really good quartet was a thrill like I’d never experienced before. Almost as good was a comment from one of them that “This chart is FUN to sing!” This was the start of a prolific relationship with that quartet, but the song has also spread farther than any other arrangement I’ve done – it’s been performed at International not just by Momma’s Boys, but also by The Alliance, a chorus out of Ohio, and it’s been used at a youth festival in Germany.
Arrangement Request:
Voicing: