About the Song
Originally recorded in 1966, the track “Time Will Tell the Story” appears on Waylon Jennings’ album Leavin’ Town.
In this song, Waylon delivers a thoughtful message wrapped in the simplest of observations: when love changes, when life veers off the expected path, sometimes the only thing you can count on is time. The lyrics—“It seems I see you everywhere… You and your new lover there… Time will tell the story of your new love” —carry a calm certainty rather than a screaming lament. They reflect the voice of a man who has seen enough to know that pain doesn’t always announce itself in thunder—it sometimes creeps in quietly.
Musically, the arrangement aligns with Jennings’ mid-1960s work—lean, country-rooted, and focused. There’s no extravagant production here. Instead, the instrumentation supports Waylon’s voice so the emotion remains direct. For listeners who’ve spent decades in the realm of country music, this style resonates: it reminds us of a time when songs mattered for their messages, when the voice wasn’t just an instrument, but a witness.
For older listeners especially, “Time Will Tell the Story” speaks to the shared experience of watching someone you care about move on—and knowing that although you can’t control the outcome, history has a way of writing its chapters anyway. It doesn’t boast or beg; it acknowledges. It invites reflection: Have we accepted what we’ve lost? Have we understood what we’ve given? And will the passage of time reveal what we couldn’t see then?
Within the wider context of Leavin’ Town, a record that captures Waylon at a crossroads between the traditional Nashville sounds of his early career and the more personal, harder-edged work that would come later, this track stands as a subtle but revealing moment. It tells us that even in his younger days, Jennings was tapping into themes of authenticity, loss, and the turning of pages.
In short: “Time Will Tell the Story” is not flashy, but it might be one of those songs that lingers—one you return to when the lights are low, the night is long, and memory asks questions you’ve set aside. It shows that even when the world moves on, a voice like Waylon’s can still stand in the quiet and say: I’m still here—and I still know what time reveals.