Merle Haggard: I Am What I Am

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There seems to be an unwritten law dictating that the more successful a country singer becomes, the less he feels the need to write his own material. Ever the iconoclast, 73-year-old Merle Haggard bucked against that tendency by writing and producing his jazzy, loose, melancholy new I Am What I Am. The opening track, “I’ve Seen It Go Away,,” sets an appropriately bittersweet, elegiac tone as the impeccably grizzled Haggard reflects on the passing of time, the transitory quality of success, and seven decades of life lessons picked up in prisons, barrooms, and boxcars. The following track, “Pretty When It’s New,” expounds on the ephemeral nature of love with a bemusement that doesn’t even attempt to hide a deep underlying sadness.