Babyface and Daryl Simmons were both losing their marriages when they wrote 'End of the Road,' and that fact is the engine of everything the song does. The tempo, the key, the way the melody refuses to resolve cleanly — all of it carries the weight of two men working through something real on a rainy day in Atlanta. The song was commissioned for a movie, recorded in three hours by a group that had to leave for tour the next morning, and mixed through the night by a man who pressed his personal trainer into service on the handclaps because he hadn't slept. None of that chaos shows in the record. What shows is the grief.

The assignment was the Boomerang soundtrack, the 1992 Eddie Murphy romantic comedy that needed a closing ballad. Babyface, L.A. Reid, and Daryl Simmons were working on the soundtrack and pegged the song for a specific scene, though it ended up being used elsewhere in the film. Babyface hit on some chords, and at the time he had been through a divorce, and Simmons was going through one too. The concept came from there, thinking about how things were at the end of the road. Simmons recalled the session to Songwriter Universe: they knew it was sad, they knew it was just a sad story, and they worked on it all day. When L.A. Reid came in from the LaFace office that evening, he sat on the couch, threw his arms across the back of it, listened to Babyface play it through, and said, 'That's just a smash.'

Daryl Simmons is the name this community should know better than it does. He is not as celebrated as his longtime collaborators, but his fingerprints are on some of the most durable R&B of the 1990s, with credits spanning Boyz II Men, Toni Braxton, Bobby Brown, TLC, Johnny Gill, and Tevin Campbell. His contribution to 'End of the Road' was the lyrics — the specific words that turned a chord progression born from personal loss into a song that would occupy a generation's most tender memories. When it was the three of them in the room, lyrics were his primary contribution. Babyface would come in with chords and melodies already formulated, and Simmons would shape the words around them. That division of labor produced something that felt both architecturally precise and emotionally unguarded, which is exactly the tension the song lives in.

The session with Boyz II Men was a feat of pressure and trust. Babyface and L.A. Reid flew from Atlanta to Philadelphia to record the group, and when they arrived, they found out Boyz II Men had to leave for a tour the next day — they had just the one session to work with. When Boyz II Men heard Babyface's demo, not everyone was thrilled; Wanyá Morris in particular didn't like it. But there was never any question about whether they would record it. Babyface and L.A. Reid were a very big deal, and the group knew it was a huge honor. Babyface had briefly considered keeping the song for himself, but he handed it over to the group, which turned out to be the right call. Boyz II Men recorded all of their vocals in one three-hour session. The four members — Michael McCary, Nathan Morris, Shawn Stockman, and Wanyá Morris — brought their Philadelphia vocal tradition to a song written out of Atlanta heartbreak, and the result was something that neither city alone could have made.

Then came the mix. The producers had to finish it quickly so it could be edited into the Boomerang movie. L.A. Reid ended up pulling an all-nighter mixing the song in the studio. When his personal trainer came by in the morning, Reid was still there and decided to put him to work. Reid told Blues and Soul: 'When he saw that I hadn't slept all night, I knew he'd be mad. When he came round I quickly sent him in the booth and got him and his partner to do fingersnaps and handclaps to the record so they wouldn't have the chance to say anything to me about staying up all night. What you hear on that record, the claps and snaps, is them.' Those fingersnaps are on one of the most-heard recordings in the history of American popular music, played by a man who came to the studio to talk about someone else's sleep habits.

'End of the Road' was released in June 1992 by LaFace, Arista, and Motown. After recording their vocals, Boyz II Men left for the 2 Legit 2 Quit tour, where they opened for MC Hammer alongside TLC, whose own single 'Baby-Baby-Baby' — written and produced by the same Reid, Babyface, and Simmons team — was climbing the charts at the same time. The song climbed while they were on the road, and on August 15, 1992, Boyz II Men went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It would still be there 13 weeks later, in a run that stretched from summer into late autumn. When 'End of the Road' sealed its 13th week at the top in the November 7 Billboard issue, it stood as the longest-leading chart-topper in the Hot 100's history, surpassing the previous Hot 100-era record of 10 weeks set by Olivia Newton-John's 'Physical' in 1981. It also bested the 11-week mark Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog' and 'Don't Be Cruel' had set on a predecessor Billboard chart back in 1956. The song also won Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best R&B Song at the 1993 Grammy Awards. That 13-week record would itself be broken before the year was out, when Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' ran for 14 weeks — and Boyz II Men would eventually reclaim the crown with 'One Sweet Day,' their 1995 duet with Mariah Carey, which held the top spot for 16 weeks. The people who started all of that were processing the end of their own love stories, in a room in Atlanta, the day before they had to fly to Philadelphia to hand it off. Grief moves on its own schedule, and sometimes it moves fast enough to rewrite history.