SONGWRITERS SERIES

You could make many top five lists of Haggard's best. Here's one from each category.

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You could make many top five lists of Haggard's best, one each for his restless youth songs, his heartbreak songs, his love, road and even commentary songs. Here's one from each category.

(Audio samples feature commentary by Robert Hilburn)

1. 1968. This is one of the greatest country songs ever written, another installment in Haggard's memorable series of often complex and contradictory tales of the working man's blues. It's a tribute to his mother's mostly fruitless struggle to steer him right.

2. 1966. When Haggard sings, "My house is a prison, where memories surround me / There's no place to hide where your memory won't find me," it's all the more haunting when you remember the painful years he spent in prison and reform school. This heartbreaking ballad, with a melody as mournful as its imagery, is about as dark as pop gets.

3. 1968. What makes the good times so sweet in this gentle ballad about renewed love is the memory of the bad times: "What a fool I was to think I could get by / With only these few million tears I've cried / I should have known the worst was yet to come / And that crying time for me had just begun."

4. 1969. With a melody that echoes the gentle hum of tires on the road, this midtempo tune begins: "White line fever, a sickness born down deep within my soul / White line fever, the years keep flyin' by like the highline poles."

5. 2003. Backed by an understated melody, Haggard chides both the Bush administration and the media for accepting the "mission accomplished" claim in Iraq: "Politicians do all the talking: soldiers pay the dues / Suddenly the war is over, that's the news."