“My Poor Old Heart” is a song written by Donna Hughes, a North Carolina singer and songwriter who emerged in the early 2000s as a notable new voice in bluegrass songwriting. Hughes first recorded the song herself in 2003.
The lyric is a gentle, plainspoken heartbreak song — a worn and weary heart that has loved and lost and is not sure it can risk loving again. That kind of quiet, intimate sentiment suited the song to soft, harmony-driven treatment.
“My Poor Old Heart” reached a wide audience when Alison Krauss and Union Station recorded it for their 2004 album “Lonely Runs Both Ways.” Krauss, one of the most celebrated singers in bluegrass, gave the song the delicate, aching reading it called for, and the recording helped establish Donna Hughes as a songwriter whose work the music’s leading artists were eager to record.
