Sometimes You Just Can't Win

"Sometimes You Just Can't Win" is a song by American country singer George Jones. It was written by Smokey Stover.

Background

Jones had recorded "Sometimes You Can't Win" during his time with United Artists; that version, which appeared as the B-side of his 1962 smash "She Thinks I Still Care," had been a minor hit, reaching #17 on the country singles chart. Couched in piano, tremolo guitar, and a bevy of background singers, it features a gentler, slightly sweeter delivery compared to the almost gothic vocal performance found on the 1971 Musicor version. By the early seventies, Jones was a much more nuanced singer than he had been a decade earlier, and "Sometimes You Just Can't Win," which rose to #10 on the charts, was a prime example of how his singing could be, at times, frightening in its intensity. The song, a suicidal lament about unrequited love, begins softly with gently picked mandolin:

Just when the sun shines the brightest

and the world looks all right again

An ensemble of strings and background singers begins a crescendo:

Then the clouds fill the skies

You can't believe your eyes

Sometimes you just can't win

The narrator's inner turmoil - being hopelessly in love with a woman who only considers him a friend - drives him to despair that turns into corrosive resentment:

My love never meant much to you, dear

For to you I was always a friend

Why did I fall? You have no heart at all

Sometime you just can't win

Making these performances all the more remarkable is the offhand manner in which many of his sides at Musicor were recorded. In his 1995 autobiography, Jones admitted to usually being loaded at his recording sessions,^[1] with many of the vocals laid down in one take.^[2] "I'd go through one take," he wrote, "Pappy Daily [his producer] would play back what I had done, and then he'd usually holler, 'Ship it.'"^[2]

1. ↑ Jones, George; Carter, Tom 1995, pp. 287.
2. 1 2 Jones, George; Carter, Tom 1995, pp. 106.