About The Song
A Thousand Times a Day reached country radio on April 13, 1996 as the second single from Patty Loveless’s album The Trouble with the Truth. Gary Burr and Gary Nicholson wrote the song. Emory Gordy Jr. produced the recording. The track runs 3:31 and appears as the seventh song on the album.
George Jones recorded the original version three years earlier for his 1993 album High-Tech Redneck. That recording was never issued as a single. Loveless’s cover became the version that reached a wider audience.
The single spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and peaked at number 13 for the week of July 27, 1996. It reached number 27 on the RPM Country Tracks chart in Canada. The music video was directed by Nigel Dick.
The album itself, released in January 1996 on Epic, peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and later received platinum certification for shipments of more than one million copies in the United States. Its lead single, “You Can Feel Bad,” and the later single “Lonely Too Long” both reached number 1 on the country chart. “A Thousand Times a Day” sat between those hits and the top-five single “She Drew a Broken Heart.”
The song follows a narrator who has already quit cigarettes and has not lit one in a year. Alcohol has also been left behind. Those habits proved manageable. The harder problem remains: the mind still turns to the former partner a thousand times a day. The comparison is direct. Giving up the person has proven more difficult than giving up the substances.
Deborah Evans Price of Billboard wrote that few singers matched the depth of emotion Loveless brought to a ballad and called the performance stunning. The mournful fiddle and restrained production, she noted, supported the feeling in the lyric. Wendy Newcomer of Cash Box observed that Loveless had never recorded a weak song in her view and that the honesty of the performance stood out. She also pointed out that Loveless was one of the few contemporary female artists who could take a song previously cut by George Jones and match the passion of the original.
The single arrived during a strong commercial stretch for Loveless on Epic. The Trouble with the Truth produced multiple top-ten country hits and confirmed her place among the leading country voices of the mid-1990s. The song itself continues to appear on later compilations. Its lasting strength lies in the plain admission that some habits are easier to break than others, and that the memory of one person can outlast every deliberate effort to leave it behind.
Video
Lyric
I gave up cigarettes
I haven’t had to light one yet
And it’s been a year since I stopped
The same goes for alcohol
I don’t touch the stuff at all
And I used to drink till I dropped
Those were tough, this is easy
And it feels so good to say
Forgetting you is not that hard to do
I’ve done it a thousand times a day
Friends said it’d take some time
To get you off my mind
They thought I’d never let you go
Well, I guess I proved them wrong
One more bad habit gone
Just like the whiskey and the smokes
Those were tough, this is easy
Well, I’m all right, yeah, I’m okay
Forgetting you is not that hard to do
I’ve done it a thousand times a day
I’ve given you up for good
Just like I said I would
The night you walked away
Forgetting you is not that hard to do
I’ve done it a thousand times a day
Yes, I’ve done it a thousand times a day