Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

Country Music

When Merle Haggard married Bonnie Owens in 1965, she was already a star in her own right and the former wife of Buck Owens. Together, they blended music and life, with Bonnie standing beside Merle through his early rise, harmony lines weaving into his rough-hewn voice. Even after their divorce in 1978, the bond never broke. Bonnie continued to tour with Merle, often introducing him on stage with quiet pride. Merle once said, “She believed in me when no one else did.” That loyalty defined their connection — more than husband and wife, they became lifelong allies. For fans, seeing Bonnie by Merle’s side was proof that love doesn’t always disappear; sometimes it evolves, finding a new shape. Their story remains one of country music’s rarest legacies: a partnership that endured beyond titles, held together by respect, music, and an unshakable devotion to the songs they carried.

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Introduction

Some songs feel like they’ve always been there—like they were written to soundtrack life’s quiet heartbreaks and second chances. “Today I Started Loving You Again” is one of those timeless pieces. Co-written by Merle Haggard and Bonnie Owens in 1968, it began as a song of regret and renewal, a confession that love never truly leaves, even when it seems buried.

By the time Merle and Bonnie sang it together again in 1996, the song carried more than just the weight of its lyrics. It carried history. These weren’t just two voices blending on stage; they were two lives that had been intertwined through music, marriage, and friendship. You could hear years of shared stories in every line—the tenderness, the hurt, and the lingering bond that never quite fades.

What makes the song so moving is its honesty. It doesn’t dress love up in perfection; it admits that sometimes we lose it, only to realize we never really let it go. And when Merle and Bonnie sang it together, it was more than a performance—it felt like they were letting us glimpse into a private conversation, one where forgiveness and memory still lived side by side.

That’s why “Today I Started Loving You Again” continues to resonate. It’s not just a country classic—it’s a reminder that love is rarely neat, often messy, but always powerful enough to circle back when we least expect it.

Video

 

Lyrics

[Chorus]
Today I started loving you again
I’m right back where I’ve really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
Then today I started loving you again

[Verse]
What a fool I was to think I could get by
With only these few million tears I’ve cried
I should have known the worst was yet to come
And that crying time for me had just begun

[Chorus]
Today I started loving you again
I’m right back where I’ve really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
Then today I started loving you again

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Country Music

THE SONG WAS CLIMBING THE CHARTS WHEN HIS OWN THROAT STARTED CLOSING ON HIM. BY 1974, RCA WAS DONE WAITING. The record was “Whiskey River.” In 1972, it was supposed to be Johnny Bush’s big door. He had already earned the nickname “Country Caruso” in Texas. He had played drums, worked honky-tonks, moved through Ray Price’s world, stood near Willie Nelson, and finally had the kind of song that could push him past regional fame. Radio started playing it. Then the voice began to fail. Not all at once. That may have made it worse. First the high notes turned rough. Then the control started slipping. Some nights he could still sing enough to get through the set. Other nights, the thing that had made him special simply would not obey him. Bush later said he thought God was punishing him. Doctors did not have the answer at first. Prescriptions. Wrong guesses. Fear. The career kept sliding while the song kept moving into someone else’s hands. In 1974, RCA dropped him. Four years later, he was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder affecting the voice. Willie Nelson turned “Whiskey River” into his own concert-opening signature, while the man who wrote it spent years fighting to get enough of his throat back to sing again. Later, therapy and Botox injections helped. Johnny Bush did come back. But the cruelest part had already happened: his most famous song kept living loudly onstage every night — while his own voice had to learn how to survive in pieces.

Country Music

A TEXAS RANGER HEARD A TEENAGER SINGING IN JAIL. THREE YEARS LATER, THAT SAME VOICE WAS SITTING AT NO. 1 ON THE COUNTRY CHART. The song did not start in Nashville. It started behind bars in Texas. Johnny Rodriguez was still a teenager, already carrying more trouble than a young man should have had to carry. His father had died. His older brother had died. Then came the night that put him in jail. He sang to pass the time. Not for a producer. Not for a label. Just a young man in a cell with a voice too strong for the walls around it. Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson heard him. Word moved to Happy Shahan, the man behind Alamo Village, the western movie set near Brackettville. Johnny was brought there to perform. Then Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare helped open the next door. By 21, Johnny Rodriguez was signed to Mercury Records. In 1973, “You Always Come Back to Hurting Me” went to No. 1. Then came “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico,” “That’s the Way Love Goes,” and a run of hits that made him one of country music’s most important Mexican American voices. He sang in English. Then Spanish would slip into the record like home refusing to stay outside. Country music had always been full of border towns, working men, lonely highways, and men trying to outrun bad luck. Johnny Rodriguez did not need to fake any of that. Before Nashville found him, a Texas jail heard him first.

Country Music

BILLY JOE SHAVER BURIED HIS WIFE, HIS MOTHER, AND HIS SON. THEN HIS HEART GAVE OUT ONSTAGE AT GRUENE HALL — AND THE CROWD DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HE WAS DYING. By 2001, Billy Joe Shaver had already lost more than most country songs could hold. He was not a polished Nashville product. He was the Texas songwriter behind much of Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes, the man who wrote like the road had cut him open and left the truth showing. Then the losses came close together. His wife Brenda died in 1999. His mother died that same year. On December 31, 2000, his son Eddy Shaver — his guitar player, his blood, his shadow onstage — died of a drug overdose at 38. Billy Joe kept moving because stopping probably felt worse. On August 25, 2001, he walked onto the stage at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas. The room was historic. The crowd was there for songs. They did not come to watch a man collapse under the weight of the last two years. Then his chest started failing him. Billy Joe was having a heart attack while performing. He kept going long enough that the audience apparently did not realize how close the night came to turning into his final show. Afterward came surgery. Then recovery. Then another record. Most singers talk about surviving the road. Billy Joe Shaver survived a song, a stage, and a heart that finally tried to quit in the middle of the set.

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Country Music

THE SONG WAS CLIMBING THE CHARTS WHEN HIS OWN THROAT STARTED CLOSING ON HIM. BY 1974, RCA WAS DONE WAITING. The record was “Whiskey River.” In 1972, it was supposed to be Johnny Bush’s big door. He had already earned the nickname “Country Caruso” in Texas. He had played drums, worked honky-tonks, moved through Ray Price’s world, stood near Willie Nelson, and finally had the kind of song that could push him past regional fame. Radio started playing it. Then the voice began to fail. Not all at once. That may have made it worse. First the high notes turned rough. Then the control started slipping. Some nights he could still sing enough to get through the set. Other nights, the thing that had made him special simply would not obey him. Bush later said he thought God was punishing him. Doctors did not have the answer at first. Prescriptions. Wrong guesses. Fear. The career kept sliding while the song kept moving into someone else’s hands. In 1974, RCA dropped him. Four years later, he was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder affecting the voice. Willie Nelson turned “Whiskey River” into his own concert-opening signature, while the man who wrote it spent years fighting to get enough of his throat back to sing again. Later, therapy and Botox injections helped. Johnny Bush did come back. But the cruelest part had already happened: his most famous song kept living loudly onstage every night — while his own voice had to learn how to survive in pieces.

Country Music

A TEXAS RANGER HEARD A TEENAGER SINGING IN JAIL. THREE YEARS LATER, THAT SAME VOICE WAS SITTING AT NO. 1 ON THE COUNTRY CHART. The song did not start in Nashville. It started behind bars in Texas. Johnny Rodriguez was still a teenager, already carrying more trouble than a young man should have had to carry. His father had died. His older brother had died. Then came the night that put him in jail. He sang to pass the time. Not for a producer. Not for a label. Just a young man in a cell with a voice too strong for the walls around it. Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson heard him. Word moved to Happy Shahan, the man behind Alamo Village, the western movie set near Brackettville. Johnny was brought there to perform. Then Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare helped open the next door. By 21, Johnny Rodriguez was signed to Mercury Records. In 1973, “You Always Come Back to Hurting Me” went to No. 1. Then came “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico,” “That’s the Way Love Goes,” and a run of hits that made him one of country music’s most important Mexican American voices. He sang in English. Then Spanish would slip into the record like home refusing to stay outside. Country music had always been full of border towns, working men, lonely highways, and men trying to outrun bad luck. Johnny Rodriguez did not need to fake any of that. Before Nashville found him, a Texas jail heard him first.

Country Music

BILLY JOE SHAVER BURIED HIS WIFE, HIS MOTHER, AND HIS SON. THEN HIS HEART GAVE OUT ONSTAGE AT GRUENE HALL — AND THE CROWD DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HE WAS DYING. By 2001, Billy Joe Shaver had already lost more than most country songs could hold. He was not a polished Nashville product. He was the Texas songwriter behind much of Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes, the man who wrote like the road had cut him open and left the truth showing. Then the losses came close together. His wife Brenda died in 1999. His mother died that same year. On December 31, 2000, his son Eddy Shaver — his guitar player, his blood, his shadow onstage — died of a drug overdose at 38. Billy Joe kept moving because stopping probably felt worse. On August 25, 2001, he walked onto the stage at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas. The room was historic. The crowd was there for songs. They did not come to watch a man collapse under the weight of the last two years. Then his chest started failing him. Billy Joe was having a heart attack while performing. He kept going long enough that the audience apparently did not realize how close the night came to turning into his final show. Afterward came surgery. Then recovery. Then another record. Most singers talk about surviving the road. Billy Joe Shaver survived a song, a stage, and a heart that finally tried to quit in the middle of the set.

Country Music

HIS WIFE DIED THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING. THREE WEEKS LATER, THE KING OF HONKY-TONK WAS FOUND DEAD IN THE SAME FLORIDA HOME. Gary Stewart was never built like a clean Nashville star. He came out of Kentucky poverty, grew up in Florida, and sang country music like the bottle was already open before the band counted off. In the mid-1970s, people called him the King of Honky-Tonk. “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” went to No. 1 in 1975. But the road under him was never steady. There was the drinking. The drugs. The old back injury. The disappearing years when country music moved on and Gary Stewart kept slipping further from the bright part of the business. Mary Lou was the person who kept showing up beside him. They had been married for more than 40 years. She had seen the bars, the money, the chaos, the fall, the comeback attempts, and the quiet Florida days after the big moment had passed. Then November 26, 2003 came. Mary Lou died of pneumonia, the day before Thanksgiving. Gary canceled his shows. Friends said he was devastated. On December 16, Bill Hardman, his daughter’s boyfriend and Gary’s close friend, went to check on him at his Fort Pierce home. Gary Stewart was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Fans remember the voice bending around heartbreak like it had nowhere else to go. But the last chapter was not on a stage. It was a widower in Florida, three weeks after losing the woman who had survived the whole honky-tonk storm with him.