Lefty Frizzell’s “That’s the Way Love Goes” has been on my list to learn for a long time. My father-in-law, being a pretty serious music fan, suggested it among a handful of others shortly after he caught wind of this blog. The song was written by Lefty himself, along with Sanger D. Shafer, was included on Willie Nelson’s Frizzell tribute album, To Lefty From Willie, and won Merle Haggard a Grammy for his vocal performance of it on his 1983 cut of the song.

The song’s structure is unusual by today’s standards: verse-chorus-instrumental-chorus, and even the verse and the chorus are basically the same melody. And the spoken lines would be way out of place on contemporary country radio, too. But even as a song from a different time, this one is a classic. Without intentionally thinking about it, you’d probably just be singing along and enjoying it rather than noticing that it doesn’t fit today’s radio format.