“A Better Love Next Time”
Merle Haggard
Written by Johnny Christopher and Bobby Wood
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
October 13, 1989
I begin with an important disclaimer for those who are not frequent readers of Country Universe.
I am not, never have been, and never will be a traditionalist when it comes to country music. I don’t believe that it needs saving from interlopers. I don’t think that fiddles and steel guitar make a country record better by default.
All that being established, Merle Haggard missed a step by not going using a traditional country arrangement here. The saxophone on this track is wildly out of place. Straight up intrusive, really. Haggard competes with it to be heard and gives one of his less inspiring vocal performances to accompany it.
The song has some cleverly written lines, but they get lost in the Moonlighting arrangement. It’s hard not to wonder if Haggard’s already impressive run at country radio could’ve been extended by embracing the approach that his acolytes like Clint Black and Randy Travis were producing at the time.
As it actually played out, this was his final top ten hit, and he followed it with his final top forty hit, “If You Want to Be My Woman.” His next and final album for Epic, Blue Jungle, was the first album of his career to miss the top forty. But he surfaced on independent labels after that project, and earned critical acclaim for a series of records over the next two decades, including highlights like 1994 and The Bluegrass Sessions.
Haggard’s accolades since his final No. 1 single were also impressive, including induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, and the Kennedy Centers Honor in 2010. It’s also worth noting here that Haggard topped our list of country music’s 100 Greatest Men in 2014. Haggard passed away on his 79th birthday in 2016.
“A Better Love Next Time” gets a C.
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I remember this song but was never very familiar with the timeline of Merle’s hits. I always pegged it as coming from the early half of the 80s where the saxophone and general adult contemporary vibe would have fit in better with everything else on the radio. The song sticks out like a sore thumb stylistically coming from late 1989, particularly with all of the saxophone. I wonder if there’s an intriguing story here on why either Merle or his producers were channeling the country sound of 1984 at the heart of the New Traditionalist era. With that said, I kind of like the song. Its smooth vibe is silked up further by the saxophone and I don’t find it or Merle’s vocal delivery off-putting. It’s definitely a minor pleasure by the standards of Merle’s catalog, but the extent to which Merle is ying-ing as the rest of the industry is yang-ing helps the song stand out among the peers of its vintage and show us a different side of Merle.
Grade: B
Don Markham’s horn playing has been a part of every single recording Haggard has done since 1974. As out of place as that saxophone may sound here it has been part of The Strangers sound for years, Haggard had his reasons for featuring it on this hit, and in Haggard we trust.
I think he also sounds in top singing form, clear and light with his signature vocal dips and swoops.
Clint Black will chase this very sound, style, and feel on his sophomore album, substituting the harmonica for the saxophone.