“Things in Life” appears on Don Stover’s 1972 Rounder album Things in Life, the version associated with this entry. Stover, the West Virginia–born banjoist who rose to prominence with the Lilly Brothers in the 1950s and 1960s before returning to West Virginia in the 1970s, was one of the most distinctive three-finger banjo players of his generation, with a hard-edged style that bridged the older Earl Scruggs tradition and the newer J.D. Crowe register.
The song is generally credited to Stover. The lyric is a hard-luck reflection: the narrator working through the small disappointments and losses that have piled up over the years, the “things in life” that wear a person down even without any single catastrophic event. The conceit’s plainness pairs well with Stover’s understated lead vocal, and the song works in the lighter register of his catalogue alongside his more banjo-virtuoso instrumental pieces.
The harmonic shape is straightforwardly traditional in G or A, the tempo sits in the moderate range, and the song belongs to the broader strand of West-Virginia-influenced hard-traditional bluegrass that runs through Stover’s catalogue. It works as a vocal feature with a clear banjo break and a chorus harmony slot.
