Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

Country Music

George Jones – Choices

“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.”

Introduction

“Choices” is one of those songs that stops you in your tracks. Its raw emotion, paired with a melody that lingers long after it ends, has the power to bring life’s difficult decisions into sharp focus. As a personal favorite of George Jones fans, the song resonates deeply with anyone who has wrestled with the consequences of their actions.

About the Composition

  • Title: Choices
  • Composer: Billy Yates and Mike Curtis
  • Premiere Date: Released in May 1999
  • Album: Cold Hard Truth by George Jones
  • Genre: Country

Background

“Choices” was written by Billy Yates and Mike Curtis and became widely known after George Jones’ poignant interpretation on his album Cold Hard Truth. The song’s release came at a significant time in Jones’ life, reflecting his hard-won sobriety and long battle with personal demons, including addiction and the struggles of fame.

When Jones released Cold Hard Truth, “Choices” stood out as a deeply personal anthem of repentance and reflection. It won a Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance, proving its resonance both within the industry and among fans. The song’s honest lyrics and simple yet powerful arrangement make it a standout in Jones’ illustrious career.

Musical Style

“Choices” exemplifies traditional country music with its minimalistic instrumentation and heartfelt delivery. The song features a gentle acoustic arrangement, where the pedal steel guitar and subtle piano lines evoke an air of melancholy. George Jones’ iconic voice, rich with emotion, becomes the centerpiece of the song, allowing listeners to fully absorb the weight of its themes.

The slow tempo and uncluttered melody give the lyrics space to breathe, amplifying their emotional impact. This straightforward yet evocative style underscores the sincerity of the message, a hallmark of Jones’ late-career artistry.

Lyrics

The lyrics of “Choices” dive deep into themes of regret and redemption. Lines like “I’ve had choices, since the day that I was born” and “Living and dying with the choices I’ve made” reflect the universal struggle of living with the consequences of one’s decisions.

Each verse unravels a story of introspection, culminating in a chorus that feels almost like a confession. The song’s words resonate with authenticity, connecting with listeners who’ve faced their own crossroads in life.

Performance History

George Jones’ live performances of “Choices” became emotional moments for audiences. The song gained additional prominence during the 1999 Country Music Association Awards, where Jones declined to perform the shortened version requested by producers. His refusal was emblematic of his commitment to the song’s integrity, further cementing its place in country music history.

Notable covers and tributes have kept the song alive, with many artists praising its depth and honesty.

Cultural Impact

“Choices” transcended its role as a hit single to become a cultural touchstone. It has been embraced not only by country music fans but also by a broader audience drawn to its universal themes of accountability and redemption. The song is often used in storytelling mediums such as films and documentaries to underscore reflective moments, further proving its versatility and relevance.

Legacy

The legacy of “Choices” lies in its authenticity. It serves as a testament to George Jones’ ability to convey profound emotions through music. For Jones, it was more than a song—it was a reflection of his own life.

Today, “Choices” continues to be a favorite among country music enthusiasts, frequently cited as one of the genre’s most honest and impactful songs. Its timeless message ensures it remains relevant to new generations of listeners.

Conclusion

“Choices” reminds us that every decision shapes our journey. George Jones’ heartfelt delivery makes it a song that resonates long after the last note fades. If you haven’t yet, take a moment to listen to his performance—perhaps start with the live version from the 1999 CMA Awards. It’s not just a song; it’s an experience, a lesson, and a legacy all rolled into one

Video

Lyrics

I’ve had choices
Since the day that I was born
There were voices
That told me right from wrong
If I had listened
No, I wouldn’t be here today
Living and dying
With the choices I made
I was tempted
By an early age I found
I liked drinkin’
Oh and I never turned it down
There were loved ones
But I turned them all away
Now I’m living and dying
With the choices I made
I’ve had choices
Since the day that I was born
There were voices
That told me right from wrong
If I had listened
No, I wouldn’t be here today
Living and dying
With the choices I made
I guess I’m payin’
For the things that I have done
If I could go back
Oh Lord knows I’d run
But I’m still losin’
This game of life I play
Living and dying
With the choices I made
I’ve had choices
Since the day that I was born
There were voices
That told me right from wrong
If I had listened
I wouldn’t be here today
Living and dying
With the choices I made
Living and dying
With the choices I made

Related Post

Country Music

THE DIVORCE WAS ALREADY FINAL. THEN GEORGE JONES AND TAMMY WYNETTE WALKED BACK INTO THE STUDIO AND SANG ABOUT A WEDDING RING THAT ENDED UP BACK IN A PAWN SHOP. By 1976, George Jones and Tammy Wynette were no longer country music’s perfect storm at home. The marriage had already broken. The fights, drinking, leaving, returning, and public pain had finally become legal fact. They divorced in 1975. But country radio was not finished with them. The song was “Golden Ring,” written by Bobby Braddock and Rafe Van Hoy. It did not need a complicated story. A ring sits in a pawn shop. A young couple buys it. They marry. The love dies. The ring ends up back where it started. By itself, it is just metal. Only love can make it mean anything. For almost any other duet pair, that would have been a sad country song. For George and Tammy, it sounded like somebody had put their marriage on the counter and asked them to sing over it. The record came out in May 1976, about fourteen months after their divorce. Fans heard the voices together and kept wanting the old story to repair itself. George later admitted he hated working with Tammy after the split because it brought back too many bad memories and made people think they were getting back together. But the song went to No. 1. The marriage was gone. The ring in the song had gone back to the pawn shop. And somehow, George Jones and Tammy Wynette turned the wreckage into one of the most painful duets country music ever sent to the top of the chart.

Country Music

HE DID NOT WRITE HIS BIGGEST HIT. BUT DAVID ALLAN COE WAS THE ONE WHO TOLD STEVE GOODMAN IT WAS NOT COUNTRY ENOUGH. By 1975, David Allan Coe had already made Nashville nervous. He had the prison stories. The long hair. The rhinestone suits. The biker energy. The habit of walking into country music like he had come from somewhere the industry did not want to explain. He could write songs that Tanya Tucker took to No. 1. He could make Johnny Paycheck sound like a working man ready to burn the whole place down. But Coe still needed a hit with his own name on it. Then Steve Goodman brought him a song. It was called “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” Goodman had written it with John Prine, though Prine did not want his name on the credit. The song sounded like a country record, but it was also laughing at country records — all the lonely men, the old heartbreak lines, the whiskey, the rain, the famous names, the desperate need to sound sad enough for a jukebox to believe you. Goodman thought he had written the perfect country-and-western song. Coe disagreed. On the spoken introduction to the record, Coe told the story his own way. He said he wrote Goodman back and explained that no song could call itself the perfect country song without a few things in it: mama, trains, trucks, prison, and getting drunk. Goodman took the challenge. He sent back one more verse. The new verse packed every one of those things into the same disaster — a drunk son, a mother getting out of prison, a pickup truck, a train, and a rainstorm. It was so overdone that it became brilliant. Not because it was realistic. Because it understood exactly how country music had built its own mythology. Coe did not write the song, but he knew how to make it his. When he recorded it for Once Upon a Rhyme, he did not sing it like a novelty act trying to get a laugh. He sang it with enough wounded pride that the joke had a bruise underneath it. He named Waylon Jennings, Charley Pride, Merle Haggard, and Faron Young inside the song’s world — then turned the whole thing into a barroom mirror held up to Nashville. Released in 1975, it became David Allan Coe’s first Top 10 country hit. David Allan Coe did not need to write “You Never Even Called Me by My Name” to own it. He only had to recognize that the joke was really about all of them.

Country Music

THE SEAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WAYLON’S. HE GAVE IT AWAY TO A SICK MAN. HOURS LATER, THAT PLANE CRASHED — AND COUNTRY MUSIC GOT ONE OF ITS HEAVIEST SURVIVORS. Before Waylon Jennings became Waylon Jennings, he was Buddy Holly’s bass player. Not the outlaw yet. Not the black-hatted voice that would later push Nashville until the walls moved. Just a young Texas musician riding through the frozen Midwest on the Winter Dance Party tour, playing behind one of rock and roll’s brightest names, trying to keep up with a schedule that was already wearing everybody down. The buses were cold. The jumps between towns were brutal. Musicians were sick, tired, and half-frozen. Buddy Holly finally chartered a small plane after the Clear Lake, Iowa show, hoping to get ahead of the road for once. Waylon had a seat. Then J.P. Richardson — The Big Bopper — was sick and miserable from the flu. He did not want another long ride on that freezing bus. Waylon gave him his place on the plane. It sounded like a simple favor in the middle of a hard tour. A tired man needed the seat more. Waylon took the bus. Before they split, Buddy joked with him about the bus freezing up. Waylon joked back about the plane crashing. Then the plane went down. Buddy Holly died. Ritchie Valens died. The Big Bopper died. Pilot Roger Peterson died. Waylon Jennings lived because he had given away his seat — and carried the weight of that joke for the rest of his life. That kind of survival does not leave a man clean. Waylon went on, but not as somebody untouched by it. The road after Buddy Holly was not a straight line into stardom. There were years of trying, drifting, radio work, club work, label pressure, and Nashville trying to fit him into shapes he did not belong in. But something hard had already been burned into him. By the 1970s, Waylon stopped asking Nashville for permission to sound like himself. He fought for control, used his own band, cut records with the dirt still on them, and helped make outlaw country feel less like an image and more like a refusal. The seat he gave away did not make him famous. It left him alive. And years later, when that voice came out dark, stubborn, wounded, and impossible to polish, it sounded like a man who knew exactly how thin the line was between a bus ride and a funeral.

You Missed

Country Music

THE DIVORCE WAS ALREADY FINAL. THEN GEORGE JONES AND TAMMY WYNETTE WALKED BACK INTO THE STUDIO AND SANG ABOUT A WEDDING RING THAT ENDED UP BACK IN A PAWN SHOP. By 1976, George Jones and Tammy Wynette were no longer country music’s perfect storm at home. The marriage had already broken. The fights, drinking, leaving, returning, and public pain had finally become legal fact. They divorced in 1975. But country radio was not finished with them. The song was “Golden Ring,” written by Bobby Braddock and Rafe Van Hoy. It did not need a complicated story. A ring sits in a pawn shop. A young couple buys it. They marry. The love dies. The ring ends up back where it started. By itself, it is just metal. Only love can make it mean anything. For almost any other duet pair, that would have been a sad country song. For George and Tammy, it sounded like somebody had put their marriage on the counter and asked them to sing over it. The record came out in May 1976, about fourteen months after their divorce. Fans heard the voices together and kept wanting the old story to repair itself. George later admitted he hated working with Tammy after the split because it brought back too many bad memories and made people think they were getting back together. But the song went to No. 1. The marriage was gone. The ring in the song had gone back to the pawn shop. And somehow, George Jones and Tammy Wynette turned the wreckage into one of the most painful duets country music ever sent to the top of the chart.

Country Music

HE DID NOT WRITE HIS BIGGEST HIT. BUT DAVID ALLAN COE WAS THE ONE WHO TOLD STEVE GOODMAN IT WAS NOT COUNTRY ENOUGH. By 1975, David Allan Coe had already made Nashville nervous. He had the prison stories. The long hair. The rhinestone suits. The biker energy. The habit of walking into country music like he had come from somewhere the industry did not want to explain. He could write songs that Tanya Tucker took to No. 1. He could make Johnny Paycheck sound like a working man ready to burn the whole place down. But Coe still needed a hit with his own name on it. Then Steve Goodman brought him a song. It was called “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” Goodman had written it with John Prine, though Prine did not want his name on the credit. The song sounded like a country record, but it was also laughing at country records — all the lonely men, the old heartbreak lines, the whiskey, the rain, the famous names, the desperate need to sound sad enough for a jukebox to believe you. Goodman thought he had written the perfect country-and-western song. Coe disagreed. On the spoken introduction to the record, Coe told the story his own way. He said he wrote Goodman back and explained that no song could call itself the perfect country song without a few things in it: mama, trains, trucks, prison, and getting drunk. Goodman took the challenge. He sent back one more verse. The new verse packed every one of those things into the same disaster — a drunk son, a mother getting out of prison, a pickup truck, a train, and a rainstorm. It was so overdone that it became brilliant. Not because it was realistic. Because it understood exactly how country music had built its own mythology. Coe did not write the song, but he knew how to make it his. When he recorded it for Once Upon a Rhyme, he did not sing it like a novelty act trying to get a laugh. He sang it with enough wounded pride that the joke had a bruise underneath it. He named Waylon Jennings, Charley Pride, Merle Haggard, and Faron Young inside the song’s world — then turned the whole thing into a barroom mirror held up to Nashville. Released in 1975, it became David Allan Coe’s first Top 10 country hit. David Allan Coe did not need to write “You Never Even Called Me by My Name” to own it. He only had to recognize that the joke was really about all of them.

Country Music

THE SEAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WAYLON’S. HE GAVE IT AWAY TO A SICK MAN. HOURS LATER, THAT PLANE CRASHED — AND COUNTRY MUSIC GOT ONE OF ITS HEAVIEST SURVIVORS. Before Waylon Jennings became Waylon Jennings, he was Buddy Holly’s bass player. Not the outlaw yet. Not the black-hatted voice that would later push Nashville until the walls moved. Just a young Texas musician riding through the frozen Midwest on the Winter Dance Party tour, playing behind one of rock and roll’s brightest names, trying to keep up with a schedule that was already wearing everybody down. The buses were cold. The jumps between towns were brutal. Musicians were sick, tired, and half-frozen. Buddy Holly finally chartered a small plane after the Clear Lake, Iowa show, hoping to get ahead of the road for once. Waylon had a seat. Then J.P. Richardson — The Big Bopper — was sick and miserable from the flu. He did not want another long ride on that freezing bus. Waylon gave him his place on the plane. It sounded like a simple favor in the middle of a hard tour. A tired man needed the seat more. Waylon took the bus. Before they split, Buddy joked with him about the bus freezing up. Waylon joked back about the plane crashing. Then the plane went down. Buddy Holly died. Ritchie Valens died. The Big Bopper died. Pilot Roger Peterson died. Waylon Jennings lived because he had given away his seat — and carried the weight of that joke for the rest of his life. That kind of survival does not leave a man clean. Waylon went on, but not as somebody untouched by it. The road after Buddy Holly was not a straight line into stardom. There were years of trying, drifting, radio work, club work, label pressure, and Nashville trying to fit him into shapes he did not belong in. But something hard had already been burned into him. By the 1970s, Waylon stopped asking Nashville for permission to sound like himself. He fought for control, used his own band, cut records with the dirt still on them, and helped make outlaw country feel less like an image and more like a refusal. The seat he gave away did not make him famous. It left him alive. And years later, when that voice came out dark, stubborn, wounded, and impossible to polish, it sounded like a man who knew exactly how thin the line was between a bus ride and a funeral.

Country Music

HE WAS STILL TRYING TO ESCAPE HIS FATHER’S SHADOW. THEN HE FELL 500 FEET OFF A MOUNTAIN — AND CAME BACK WITH A FACE COUNTRY MUSIC WOULD NEVER FORGET. Hank Williams Jr. was born with a name that did not feel like a gift. It felt like a job. His father was already a ghost bigger than most living men. Hank Williams had died when his son was still a child, but the voice, the songs, the hat, the legend — all of it stayed in the room. For years, Hank Jr. was pushed toward that shadow. Sing your father’s songs. Sound like your father. Stand where he stood. Carry the name without breaking it. By the mid-1970s, he was trying to become something else. The music was getting rougher. Southern rock was creeping in. Charlie Daniels, Toy Caldwell, Chuck Leavell — those kinds of players were around him. Hank Jr. was starting to hear a sound that did not belong completely to his father anymore. Then came August 8, 1975. He had gone to Montana after finishing work on an album. Up on Ajax Peak, the ground gave way beneath him. Hank Jr. slipped on an icy ledge and fell hundreds of feet down a jagged slope. By the time help reached him, the damage was brutal. His face and head were shattered. The young man who had spent his life being measured against another man’s image no longer even had his own face intact. The recovery was not a clean comeback montage. It was surgeries. Pain. Silence. Learning to live inside a body that had been broken open. Doctors worked to rebuild him. He had to fight his way back toward speech, toward singing, toward the stage. When he returned, he did not look like the old Hank Jr. The beard came. The dark glasses came. The hat stayed low. Some of it covered the scars. But after a while, it became more than hiding. It became armor. And the music changed with him. The man who came back from Ajax Peak was not interested in being polished into his father’s echo. He leaned harder into country rock, blues, honky-tonk, and outlaw attitude. “Family Tradition” did not run from the Williams name — it dragged that name into a fight and made it his own. “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,” “A Country Boy Can Survive,” and the rowdy anthems that followed turned him into something Nashville could not simply file under nostalgia. Before the fall, Hank Williams Jr. was still trying to prove he was not just Hank Williams’ son. After the fall, nobody could mistake him for anyone else.