I Am What I Am (George Jones album)
| I Am What I Am | ||||
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| Studio album by George Jones | ||||
| Released | September 1980 | |||
| Recorded | February 1980 | |||
| Studio | Columbia Recording Studio, Nashville, Tennessee | |||
| Genre | Country | |||
| Length | 28:15 | |||
| Label | Epic | |||
| Producer | Billy Sherrill | |||
| George Jones chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  |
I Am What I Am is an album by American country music artist George Jones released in 1980 on Epic Records label. It was rereleased on July 4, 2000 with bonus tracks on the Legacy Recordings label.
By 1980, Jones had not had a number one single in six years and, dogged by no shows and substance abuse, many critics began to write him off. However, the singer stunned the music industry in April when "He Stopped Loving Her Today" was released and shot to number one on the country charts, remaining there for 18 weeks. The song was written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman and tells the story of a friend who has never given up on his love; he keeps old letters and photos from back in the day and hangs on to hope that she would "come back again". The song reaches its peak in the chorus, revealing that he indeed stopped loving her when he died and the woman does return—for his funeral. In a lesser singer's hands, the song might have sounded corny or even comical but Jones' interpretation, buoyed by his brilliant delivery of the line "...first time I'd seen him smile in years", gives it a mournful, gripping realism. When it began being played on the radio in the spring of 1980, just about everyone who heard it was floored. According to producer Billy Sherrill and Jones himself, the singer hated the song when he first heard it. In Bob Allen's biography of the singer, Sherrill states, "He thought it was too long, too sad, too depressing and that nobody would ever play it...He hated the melody and wouldn't learn it." Sherrill also claims that Jones frustrated him by continually singing the song to the melody of the Kris Kristofferson hit "Help Me Make It Through the Night". In the 1989 Same Ole Me retrospective, Sherrill recalls a heated exchange during one recording session: "I said 'That's not the melody!' and he said 'Yeah, but it's a better melody.' I said 'It might be—Kristofferson would think so too, it's his melody!'" In the same documentary, Sherrill claims that Jones was in such bad physical shape during this period that "the recitation was recorded 18 months after the first verse was" and added that the last words Jones said about "He Stopped Loving Her Today" was "Nobody'll buy that morbid son of a bitch". A big part of Jones' success over the years was that he could always smell a hit but this time his instincts were woefully off. Although he had disliked "He Stopped Loving Her Today" when it was first offered to him, Jones ultimately gave the song credit for reviving his flagging career, stating that "a four-decade career had been salvaged by a three-minute song." It was more like a phenomenon than a song; Jones earned the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 1980 and the Academy of Country Music awarded the song Single of the Year and Song of the Year in 1980. It also became the Country Music Association's Song of the Year in both 1980 and 1981.
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