"The Window Up Above" is a song written and originally recorded by American country music artist George Jones.
Sometimes it’s hard to even figure where the ideas come from.” Tosches added, "For Jones, 'The Window Up Above' seemed to issue directly from a lifelong insecurity and ambivalence, a deep-rooted fear of what lurked beneath the dream of hearth and home and happiness.
"[2] The song addresses the theme of adultery, but adds a foreboding, voyeuristic twist to the typical country music "cheatin'" song, filled with jealous anger and a deep, irreconcilable sense of betrayal: I've been living a new way of life that I love so but I can see the clouds are gathering and the storm will wreck our home For last night he held you tightly and you didn't even shove This is true because I was watching from the window up above The song signaled a new era for Jones as a vocalist; in his book George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, biographer Bob Allen writes that when Jones recorded "The Window Up Above," he sang it "in a taut, almost offhand manner that called to mind the style of one of his heroes, Lefty Frizzell.
He sang in a manner which merely insinuated the presence of wild, barely suppressed emotions seething just under the surface..."[3] Although up to this point in his career Jones had been primarily known as a honky tonk country singer, his phrasing was becoming more subtle and complex as his own vocal style emerged.
As Rich Kienzle notes in the liner notes to The Essential George Jones: The Spirit of Country, "His tense, emotional delivery not only created a memorable recording, it was the first real demonstration of his increasingly powerful phrasing as he twisted and wrenched every drop of emotion out of the simple lyrics."