One Of These Days

Album: Everywhere (1997)
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Songfacts®:

  • Tim McGraw sings of his regrets over a couple of incidents in his school days. One was his bullying of a red-haired boy, the other walking away from his girlfriend.

    One of these days I'm gonna love me
    And feel the joy of sweet release
    One of these days I'll rise above me
    And at last I'll find some peace


    The hurt that the singer had caused to these people has resulted in a deep loathing of himself.
  • The song was written by Marcus Hummon, Monty Powell and Kip Raines and was first recorded by Hummon for his 1995 album All in Good Time.

    Tim McGraw covered the tune for his Everywhere album a couple of years later. Released as the record's fourth single, it peaked at #2 on the US country chart.
  • Speaking to Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International, Powell recalled the story of the song (Source The Tennessean):

    Kip and I actually went over to Marcus'. He was sitting down and was kind of fooling around (on the guitar). And he played basically the whole first verse of this song. He goes, "I've got this idea: 'I used to chase this boy from school, call him freckle face.'" He had all of that.

    Marcus is a classic writer in the fact that he isn't sure anything he does is good unless it's confirmed. He plays us what turns out to be 90 percent of that first verse and he goes, 'But I don't know. What have you guys got? I'm not sure if that's any good.' Kip and I are going, 'Oh no, wait a minute! Let's not get in a hurry here.' It was just this fantastic thing.

    So we convinced him and really, of course, (it) laid out well for one of those sort of classic, three-vignette country songs. We wound up writing and writing, and we sort of got stuck on how to bring it home. It was one of those moments of inspiration that came to me when we were sitting there and I went, 'Guys, one of these days, I'm gonna love me. Me!'

    As soon as that happened the rest of it just fell out. One of the classic story, different story, different story, apply the story to me. I'm actually really proud of how we did that."

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