Coe and longtime producer Billy Sherrill enjoyed their biggest commercial success together in the 1980s with Top 5 singles “The Ride” and “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile," but by the end of the decade a new generation of country singers were marginalizing many of the old guard as far as radio play went, with AllMusic writer Thom Jurek observing about this Coe release, “Interestingly, this record sounds so outside the new traditionalist mold dominating Nash Vegas at the time that it was quickly lost to oblivion - despite the fact that it's a true traditional country record in the most strident use of the term.” Like many of his previous albums, "A Matter of Life…and Death" is a concept album, with side one composed of “Meditations” and side two containing “Dedications.” As recounted by Jurek, the album Coe and Sherrill recorded is one of the singer’s most personal: