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I Am What I Am (Merle Haggard album)

2010 studio album by Merle Haggard

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 1, 2025
Entity authorityQ5976103 ↗
Source-derived summary

I Am What I Am is the sixty-second studio album by American country music artist Merle Haggard. It was released on April 20, 2010 by Vanguard Records. The album peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart.

The final song, “It's Gonna Be Me,” was only released on Amazon.com, despite having received positive review as a song which stands out with a heavy bass line and social-critical lyrics.

Track listing

All songs written by Merle Haggard except where noted.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “I Am What I Am (Merle Haggard album)” is 2010 studio album by Merle Haggard. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through What, Merle and Haggard, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2010—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2010. For this dossier, What, Merle and Haggard is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2010 studio album by Merle Haggard” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5976103. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “I Am What I Am (Merle Haggard album)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow I Am What I Am (Merle Haggard album) primary sources, I Am What I Am (Merle Haggard album) archive and What research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “I Am What I Am (Merle Haggard album)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “I Am What I Am (Merle Haggard album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.