Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

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MERLE HAGGARD HAD 38 NUMBER-ONE HITS. THE SONG THAT DEFINED HIM WASN’T ONE OF THEM. IT NEVER CHARTED AT ALL. Everyone knows “Okie from Muskogee.” Many know “Mama Tried.” But the song other artists have recorded more than anything else Haggard ever wrote was buried on the back of a 45 nobody was supposed to flip over. In 1967, Haggard was falling out of love with his wife, Bonnie Owens, and planning to leave her. She knew. They were walking through an airport when he looked over at her and said he thought he’d started loving her again today. She told him to turn the line around. He wrote the rest a few days later, alone in a motel room in Dallas. On February 1, 1968 — the day after cutting his next No. 1 — he recorded it in a single session and stuck it on the B-side. It wasn’t a love song. It was a man telling his wife to her face that he’d been packed and ready to go, and had changed his mind. Some songs are pushed to No. 1. This one never charted — and outlived every song that did. Have you heard Merle’s own version — or only somebody else’s?

Merle Haggard’s Song That Never Needed a Hit Parade

Merle Haggard had plenty of songs that filled jukeboxes, radio playlists, and memory itself. “Okie from Muskogee” made him a national figure. “Mama Tried” became one of the songs most closely associated with his name. But the song that kept traveling far beyond Merle Haggard’s own voice was something quieter, more personal, and, in a strange way, more revealing: “Today I Started Loving You Again.”

The song was born out of a rough chapter in Merle Haggard’s life with Bonnie Owens, his wife at the time and one of the most important musical partners he ever had. The story behind it has always carried a certain ache: the kind that comes when a relationship is already strained, but the feelings are still too complicated to end cleanly. That emotional tension gave the song its power. It did not sound like a polished confession. It sounded like a man trying to say something true before the moment passed.

According to the account that has followed the song for decades, Merle Haggard and Bonnie Owens were walking through an airport when he told her he thought he had started loving her again that day. Bonnie Owens reportedly answered with a line that flipped the feeling into something sharper and more honest: turn it around. From there, Merle Haggard wrote the rest of the song days later in Dallas, alone in a motel room. Whether heard as regret, surrender, or a second chance, the lyric felt lived in from the start.

On February 1, 1968, Merle Haggard recorded “Today I Started Loving You Again” in a single session and placed it on the B-side of a 45. It was never the obvious choice, never the promotional centerpiece, and never the song that was expected to lead. Yet that is part of its legend. Some songs climb the charts. Others slip into the culture through the back door and stay there longer.

A song other artists couldn’t stop borrowing

What makes “Today I Started Loving You Again” stand out is not chart performance but endurance. Merle Haggard’s own version helped define the mood, but the song became a standard because other singers kept returning to it. It was one of those rare country songs that could sound tender, wounded, and ordinary all at once. That mix made it easy to record and hard to forget.

Maybe that is why the song still feels larger than its original release. It was never pushed like a hit single, and it never needed to be. The honesty did the work. The restraint did the work. The quiet heartbreak did the work.

Some songs are remembered because they were everywhere. This one is remembered because it sounded like the truth.

So when people ask whether the defining Merle Haggard song was one of his No. 1 records, the answer is no. The song that carried the deepest emotional fingerprint was the one tucked on the other side of the record, waiting for listeners willing to flip it over.

And maybe that is the point. Merle Haggard did not just write hits. He wrote moments. “Today I Started Loving You Again” is the moment when love, regret, and honesty all arrived in the same breath.

 

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MERLE HAGGARD HAD 38 NUMBER-ONE HITS. THE SONG THAT DEFINED HIM WASN’T ONE OF THEM. IT NEVER CHARTED AT ALL. Everyone knows “Okie from Muskogee.” Many know “Mama Tried.” But the song other artists have recorded more than anything else Haggard ever wrote was buried on the back of a 45 nobody was supposed to flip over. In 1967, Haggard was falling out of love with his wife, Bonnie Owens, and planning to leave her. She knew. They were walking through an airport when he looked over at her and said he thought he’d started loving her again today. She told him to turn the line around. He wrote the rest a few days later, alone in a motel room in Dallas. On February 1, 1968 — the day after cutting his next No. 1 — he recorded it in a single session and stuck it on the B-side. It wasn’t a love song. It was a man telling his wife to her face that he’d been packed and ready to go, and had changed his mind. Some songs are pushed to No. 1. This one never charted — and outlived every song that did. Have you heard Merle’s own version — or only somebody else’s?

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HE DIDN’T RECORD A COVER. HE RECORDED HIS OWN EULOGY — AND EVERYONE INVOLVED KNEW IT. “Hurt” isn’t a song about addiction. It’s a man reading his own ledger out loud. Trent Reznor wrote it in his twenties, from inside the wreck. Cash sang it at seventy, from the far side of it — the same words, but one man was predicting and the other was confirming. Watch the video again. The House of Cash museum, shuttered. The dust. A banquet table set with more food than anyone could eat, and nobody sitting at it. His hands, too unsteady now to be certain of the strings. And June, on the staircase, watching him. This is for anyone who has ever looked at everything they built and seen the invoice instead of the achievement. That’s the part that breaks you. Not that he was dying. That she was standing right there — and she would go first. Four months later, she did. He followed in four more. Sometimes a man doesn’t get to apologize. He only gets to be heard. When was the last time you sat all the way through it — and what were you going through when you did?

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