“Time Is Love” is a gentle rebellion against the clock—an everyday man’s vow that the truest romance isn’t grand gestures, but simply being there.
Released to country radio on January 9, 2012, “Time Is Love” became one of those rare songs whose legacy isn’t defined by a single peak week, but by endurance. Josh Turner recorded it as the lead single from his fifth studio album Punching Bag (released June 12, 2012), and while the song peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs, it still finished the year as Billboard’s No. 1 Country Song of 2012—a famously unusual outcome, achieved through consistency and long life at radio rather than a brief moment at the summit.
That chart story suits the song’s message perfectly. “Time Is Love” argues—quietly, almost stubbornly—that what we call “love” is often nothing more (and nothing less) than the hours we choose to give. Turner himself explained the song’s core idea in plain language: it’s about “quantity time more so than quality time”—the conviction that spending large amounts of time with people is what truly builds a life together.
The track was written by Tony Martin, Mark Nesler, and Tom Shapiro, and produced by Frank Rogers—a team that gave Turner a modern sheen without stripping away his most trusted gift: that steady baritone that feels like it’s been in the room for years. The song itself is built around a simple, relatable scene: a man stuck at work, counting minutes like coins, feeling the weight of everything he’s missing at home, and deciding—without drama—that the only sensible choice is to go where his heart already is.
And that’s where “Time Is Love” quietly disarms you. It doesn’t romanticize escape. It doesn’t pretend bills aren’t real or that responsibilities don’t matter. It simply insists that a life can be technically “busy” and still emotionally poor. The chorus doesn’t shout a philosophy; it offers a truth you recognize in your bones: years pass whether we consent or not, and we don’t get refunds for the evenings we traded away for things we can’t even remember.
There’s a touching humility in the way Turner approaches the song, too. In a later interview, he admitted “Time Is Love” was a song he probably wouldn’t have written himself—it was more contemporary than his usual instincts—yet he chose it because it felt right for his voice and where he was as an artist. That kind of choice tells you something about the performer: not someone trying to repeat an old formula, but someone willing to let a song lead him into a slightly different room—so long as the emotional truth stays honest.
Even the surrounding album context reinforces that idea of grounded, working-life romance. Punching Bag debuted strongly (No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on Top Country Albums), and Turner co-wrote most of the record—yet this outside-written single became its emotional front porch.
What makes “Time Is Love” last, in the end, is that it doesn’t treat love as a feeling you “have.” It treats love as a practice—showing up, staying long enough to be known, choosing the kitchen table over the endless treadmill of “later.” It’s the kind of song that sounds simple until life makes it complicated—until you realize how many days can slip by unnoticed, and how precious it is when someone chooses to come home anyway.
