The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #227

#227: "What I've Been Meaning to Say" (2005) - Merle Haggard

We go from an upstart singer with a record full of regret and the willingness to admit failure that could have been a country-music hit forty years ago, to a once-upstart singer with a record full of regret and the willingness to admit failure that doesn't sound dissimilar to country-music hits he made forty years ago. Both songs share the same lonesome, honest, self-revealing lyrical theme, and both don appropriately forlorn music, but Hag's got the much better voice, so we'll notch the venerable one's record one place higher than the punk's, and I think--considering the fantastic county music Haggard's made throughout his career, steadily producing quality song after quality song, even through his multiple albums this decade--that maybe Hank would have wanted it this way.