About The Song
If I Could Only Fly is the 50th studio album by American country singer Merle Haggard, released in 2000. The album reached number 26 on the Billboard Country albums chart. The title song is a cover of a 1979 song written and recorded by Texas songwriter Blaze Foley. Haggard had previously recorded the song as a duet with American country singer Willie Nelson on their 1987 album, Seashores of Old Mexico, peaking at number 58 on the 1987 Billboard Hot Country Songs singles chart.
The 1990s was the most trying decade of Haggard’s professional life. Beset by financial woes that led to bankruptcy in 1993, Haggard had also run afoul of his record label boss Mike Curb. Since 1990, Haggard had released three albums on Curb and all three had charted lower than any had in his thirty-year career, with the last of them, 1996, not charting at all. Personally, Haggard had been doing much better; he had kicked the drug and alcohol problems that had plagued him for much of the 1980s and had married his fifth wife Teresa Lane in 1993. In 1995, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but when his contract with Curb expired he signed with the independent ANTI- label.[3] The move paid immediate dividends both critically and artistically; no longer compelled to compete for airplay on country radio with a fashionable hit single, the album focused on Haggard’s strengths—his singing and songwriting—and wound up rising to number 26 on the Hot Country Album Chart, his highest showing since 1987’s Chill Factor. Critics were nearly unanimous in their praise for the album, which remained on the charts for 27 weeks.
Video
Lyrics
I almost felt you touching me just now
I wish I knew which way to turn and go
I feel so good, and then then I feel so bad
I wonder what I ought to do
If I could only fly, if I could only fly
I’d bid this place goodbye, to come and be with you
But I can hardly stand, and I got no where to run
Another sinking sun, and one more lonely night
The wind keeps blowing somewhere everyday
Tell me things get better, somewhere, up the way
Just dismal thiking on a dismal day
Sad songs for us to bare
If I could only fly
If we could only fly
If we could only fly
There’d be no more lonely nights
You know sometimes I write happy songs
Then some little thing goes wrong
I wish they all could make you smile
Coming home soon and I wanna stay
Maybe we can somehow get away
I wish you could come with me when I go again
If I could only fly, if I could only fly
I’d bid this place goodbye, to come and be with you
But I can hardly stand, and I got no where to run
Another sinking sun, and one more lonely night
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