Thursday, June 26, 2025

If It Don't Bleed - James McMurtry

If It Don't Bleed - James McMurtry
3:50
The Horses And the Hounds, 2021
Written by James McMurtry

McMurtry, son of the fabled novelist Larry McMurtry, is a master songwriter with his father's gift for vivid description and pathos. Here, he approaches aging with wry acceptance and dry humor. The narrator is a man who's lived hard and now faces his own decline: “I burned a lot of bridges and I dropped a lot of balls / It’s a wonder I can ever go back to any place I've been," he sings in a craggy deadpan. "Now it’s all I can do just to get out of bed / There's more in the mirror than there is up ahead." McMurtry's  voice is limited in range, but he's cultivated a barbed deadpan delivery that cuts straight through the sentimentality other writers might lean on.

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