About the Song
A quiet ache, a fading photograph, and the voice of a man standing at the edge of memory, asking love for one last dance.
When Waylon Jennings chose to include “Let’s Turn Back the Years” on his now-iconic 1975 album Dreaming My Dreams, he wasn’t just covering a song—he was paying tribute to the heart of traditional country. Originally written and recorded by Hank Williams in 1951, the song is a haunting plea for lost love to return, for time to rewind, and for old wounds to be undone.
But in Waylon’s hands, it becomes something more: a personal reckoning. Stripped down and sincere, his version is slow, steady, and deliberate—like a man walking through a house full of memories, one room at a time. There’s no attempt to outshine Hank’s original; instead, Waylon brings a worn wisdom to it, a voice aged by the miles he’d already traveled, and the battles he’d fought both publicly and privately.
The instrumentation is sparse—just enough steel guitar and soft acoustic picking to hold the silence in place. That stillness gives Waylon’s voice all the space it needs to breathe, to tremble, to hurt. He doesn’t plead. He doesn’t raise his voice. He just remembers.
“Let’s turn back the years / And go back to yesterday…”
It’s more than nostalgia. It’s a surrender—a wish whispered into the night by a man who knows it probably won’t come true, but sings it anyway. Because sometimes the act of remembering is the only way to keep something alive.
In an album full of deep introspection, “Let’s Turn Back the Years” is one of its quietest moments—and one of its most devastatingly beautiful. It reminds us that even outlaws have soft spots, and that even the toughest men sometimes wish they could just go back to where it all began.