R.J. Carter Releases First Video Single from "Another Second Chapter"

R.J. Carter has released the first official video single from his forthcoming album, Another Second Chapter, with a lyric video for “The Boy I Told Goodbye.”

The video pairs the song with a sequence of still images that gradually illustrate the story behind the lyrics, turning one of the album’s most personal tracks into a short visual narrative. Rather than a conventional performance video, it follows the song scene by scene — from a painful drive made many years ago through memories of a family struggling with a decision no parent wants to make.

About the video: This lyric video uses AI-generated still imagery to dramatize the real-life events described in the song.

“The Boy I Told Goodbye” is drawn from Carter’s own life.

The song recalls the day Carter and his then-wife drove their young autistic son to a residential facility, having reached the point where they could no longer provide the level of care he needed at home. The opening verse places three people in the car but gives two of them other names: grief rides in the passenger seat, while innocence sits in the back.

It is a memory Carter anchors to another song. During that drive, Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” came over the radio — forever connecting the song with that day.

From there, “The Boy I Told Goodbye” moves beyond the drive itself and into the circumstances that led to it: a child whose needs exceeded what his parents could provide, the emotional and physical toll on the family, and the financial reality of making too much money to qualify for state assistance while making nowhere near enough to privately afford the care he required.

The lyric video follows that progression rather than simply placing words over a repeating background. Its images move from the car ride into memories of home, late-night attempts to find answers, prayer, anger, financial desperation and, finally, reflection years later.

That final perspective is important to the song. “The Boy I Told Goodbye” isn't written from the moment of the decision. It's written by someone looking backward across the years, still wondering what became of the child he left behind and whether that child ultimately found kindness, understanding and love.

There is no tidy resolution offered.

That is largely the point.

Some memories become stories we tell because we have finally made peace with them. Others become stories because we never did.

“The Boy I Told Goodbye” is the latter.

The song appears on R.J. Carter’s Another Second Chapter, which will be released digitally on August 14, 2026.