Always on My Mind

Columbia, under Sony. Regret, specific. He was busy. She needed the words.

Columbia released Nelson's version. Sony owns Columbia. The record is not about a scandal. It is about the days he was preoccupied, and the sentence he saved for later, and the later that came too late.

This is one of the useful sad songs. It tells you what to do while the person is still in the house.

The eight

Industry
8/10
Nelson sings it like a man who cannot fix the year.
Household
8/10
A marriage, neglected in small ordinary ways.
Piety
5/10
Little things. He knows they were the devotion.
Courage
6/10
He admits the failure without a speech about his intentions.
Republic
4/10
A private debt.
Temperance
7/10
No excuse he is willing to rest in.
Truth
9/10
He did not tell her. That is the fact.
Stewardship
8/10
A song to play before the little things are all that is left to say.

Live historicallyBefore the day ends, say the small thing you have been saving. Do not wait for a version of this song.

Song · Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, and YouTube Music · 1969

Reprise · Warner Music Group

Both Sides, Now

Reprise, under Warner. She has been fooled, and she will say so without bitterness as her only note.

Reprise released the first recording. Warner holds Reprise. Mitchell looks at the things people use as proof of wonder and says she has seen the back of them too. The last verse does not cancel the first. It makes the wonder adult.

Play the late version as well, when the voice has caught up to the lyric. Both belong.

The eight

Industry
9/10
The lyric does in three verses what most books will not.
Household
6/10
Love, seen as a illusion and as a fact. She keeps both.
Piety
5/10
Something lost and gained. She does not name it cheaply.
Courage
7/10
She changes her mind in public.
Republic
4/10
A private education.
Temperance
7/10
No rant. A reappraisal.
Truth
9/10
She admits she did not know, and that she still does not, fully.
Stewardship
8/10
A song to grow old enough for.

Live historicallyAfter it, ask what this house has now seen from both sides, and what it still chooses.