Time Flies

When you’re eight years old
Four years is half of your life
When you’re forty years old it’s only ten percent
So each year seems to pass
Faster than the last
And we all sit and wonder where the time went

Time flies like a feather in the wind
Time flies like a train around the bend
Time flies like it’s speeding down the track
With a clickety-clack
And it’s never coming back
Time flies

So you think you know what you want to do with your life
You say there’s time to do what you want to do
Don’t you know that time’s a thief
A liar and a cheat
And it’s not sittin’ ’round patiently waiting for you

Time flies like a little paper kite
Time flies like a transatlantic flight
Time flies a little faster every year
And you hold each moment near
Then you watch it disappear
As time flies

And now you wish that someone was holding you tight
So where are all those young girls you once knew
And who’s that poor old man
With the shaky hand
Standing in the mirror, looking back and waving at you

Time flies like an eagle in the sun
Time flies like a bullet from a gun
Time flies, speeding through the darkest night
Completely out of sight
And heading for the light
Time flies

Bobby Braddock

“Uncut Gems” is a series of unreleased song lyrics, recipes, notes, and more by prominent Nashville songwriters.

Bobby Braddock moved to Nashville at the age of twenty-four in 1964.  His songs, ranging from “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” to “Time Marches On,” from “Golden Ring” to “People Are Crazy,” have defined and redefined the aesthetics of the country lyric. Braddock, the only man living to have written hit country songs across six decades, wrote my favorite country song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

I first met Bobby Braddock in the winter of 1983, in the lobby of Tree when the building looked something like a strange Spanish Mission.  He edited “Reckless Night,” the first song I ever had recorded.  He advised me to repeat the two great lines of my chorus and ditch the filler.  It was very good advice.  His memoir, Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter’s Youth in Old Florida, was published by LSU Press in 2007. – Alice Randall