A Quiet Heartbreak Etched in Repetition
In “Like All the Other Times”, Marty Robbins delivers a tender confession of heartbreak and regret—a song of love lost again and again, underscored by the weary resignation of a man who knows this cycle all too well.
This track appears on Robbins’ More Greatest Hits compilation, released in 1961. It was issued as the B‑side to his hit single “Don’t Worry”, which itself soared to No. 1 on the country chart and spent ten weeks at the summit. Although “Like All the Other Times” did not chart independently, its place on a greatest‑hits record alongside Robbins’ most beloved songs signals that it held a special resonance.
At first glance, the lyrics of “Like All the Other Times” read as a simple ballad of recurring departure and longing:
“Just like all the other times you leave / Leaving me alone here to grieve … Lonely every night since I lost you.”
Yet beneath that surface lies a deeper emotional architecture. The narrator confesses to fault—”It’s my fault because I’ve lost, but I just couldn’t see”—an acknowledgment that his own blindness has contributed to the repeated heartbreak.
The song was written by Jim Glaser and Lee Emerson, both of whom carried close creative ties to Robbins. Emerson, in particular, was a longtime collaborator and manager for Robbins. Their songwriting here is spare yet powerful: no dramatic metaphors, no grand gestures, just the honest rhythm of loss and self-reproach.
Musically, the arrangement supports this emotional restraint. The instrumentation is gentle, with an understated backing that allows Robbins’s voice to carry both the melody and the weight of the confession. The pacing echoes the cyclical nature of the lyrics: the melody rises and falls in soft waves, mirroring the repeated “other times” of parting and regret.
But what makes “Like All the Other Times” so compelling is how it captures a universal experience: the pattern of loving someone who leaves, pleading for their return, and knowing, deep down, that this time might be no different. The resignation is agonizing not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s real. It’s the voice of someone who has loved enough to learn that some stories don’t change—and yet, he can’t help returning to the same waiting place.
In Robbins’s broader career, this song may not be the one that defines him to the world. He is better known for sweeping western epics like El Paso or the dramatic flair of Big Iron. But as a B-side on More Greatest Hits—a record that collects both his chart-toppers and his quieter reflections—“Like All the Other Times” stands as a deeply human moment. It shows a side of Robbins not as a cowboy legend or a storyteller in the wild frontier, but as a man in the grip of regret, longing, and the painful honesty of love gone wrong.
In that way, it remains timeless: a soft hymn for every soul who’s felt the familiar ache of watching someone go … again.