I can only spend so much time writing and thinking about AI, so here, for a change of pace, is an exploration of what makes the 1961 Willie Nelson song “Funny How Time Slips Away” compelling.
If you don’t know the song already, then stop reading and listen to it (on Spotify hereand on YouTube here). It’s only three minutes long. (Billy Walker was the first to record the song, but I like the 1965 version by the songwriter better.)
Done? Good. Let’s get going.
On the surface, the song is simple, but it contains a tremendous amount of inferable story. It reminds me of some of Randy Newman’s solo point-of-view monologue songs and Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue poems like “My Last Duchess” and “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church.”
What seems at first like a wistful song about how time passes when you aren’t paying attention pivots at the midpoint into a story about anger and heartbreak.
Most of the lyric websites don’t capture the song accurately and have line breaks based on performance rather than the logic of the story, so I’ve translated the song into a 12-line poem in three parts, with rhymes and off-rhymes at the end of key lines. This is important because it makes visible the tonal shift at the midpoint. (I’ve put the full lyrics at the bottom.)
The song worries the word “time” and related words like a dog whipping a toy back and forth. (See the boldfaced words.)
Part One opens with the speaker running into somebody he hasn’t seen for a while.
Well, hello there. My, it’s been a long, long time.
How am I doing? Oh, I guess that I’m doing fine.
The speaker seems almost surprised that the other asks after him, and the “I guess” hints that there’s more behind the answer.
It’s been so long now, but it seems now that it was only yesterday.
Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away?
At first, the lyrics seem to say, “Gosh, the years have passed quickly” but then in the third line we learn that “it seems now that it was only yesterday” when the speaker and the other person last saw each other.
The time that has slipped away is all the intervening years, so it feels like no time has passed.
Part Two is split into two pairs of lines:
How’s your new love? I hope that he’s doing fine.
I heard you told him that you’d love him till the end of time.
Even though the speaker hasn’t seen the other for a long time, we learn that the speaker has heard that the other has a new love. (Since the song is from 1961, it’s probably safe to assume that the other is a woman, but it doesn’t matter.)
We also learn that the speaker has paid attention from afar: the speaker knows that the other has protested her eternal devotion to her new love.
The song’s pivot comes after “till the end of time” at the midpoint:
Now that’s the same thing that you told me, seems like just the other day.
Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away?
We now learn that the other once broke the speaker’s heart, vowing to love him forever but then jilting him.
Part Three tells us more about the aftermath of when the woman jilted the speaker:
I gotta go now. I guess I’ll see you around.
Don’t know when though. Never know when I’ll be back in town.
Since the breakup, the speaker has moved to a different town. It’s not clear that the breakup caused the speaker’s move, but that’s at least a plausible interpretation. Despite moving away, the speaker has remained interested in the woman who broke his heart, perhaps even obsessed, as he has sought information about her love life.
Going back to the start of the song—“well, hello there”—now opens up different possibilities. Is it really an accident that the speaker and the other bump into each other? If so, how welcome is the sight of his old love to the speaker? Or has the speaker, in a moment of lovelorn masochism, sought out the woman?
That last idea seems improbable until the final pair of lines, when the speaker’s anger comes out fully, surprisingly, almost as if he blurts it out:
But remember what I tell you: in time you’re gonna pay.
And it’s surprising how time slips away.
I don’t think that the speaker is vowing revenge on the other so much as predicting that what goes around comes around, and that the bad karma of her having broken his heart will, if there’s justice, result in somebody, perhaps her new love, breaking her heart in turn. (This is a bit hopeful on the speaker’s part.)
The information density of the lyrics continues to astonish me.
History and Covers
You can learn about the song’s history on Wikipedia.
I’ve created a Spotify playlist that includes the Billy Walker original and the Willie Nelson classic as well as…
- Female-performed versions by Wanda Jackson and Tina Turner, which show that the gender dynamics of the song can shift by adding a single letter “s” to make “I hope that he’s doing fine” into “I hope that she’s doing fine.”
- A lovely duet version by Juice Newton and Willie Nelson makes the heartbreak story more obvious. Newton opens—“Well, hello there. My, it’s been a long, long time”—and then changes “How am I doing?” to “How you doing?” To which Nelson answers, “Oh, I guess that I’m doing fine.”
- Tom Jones turns the song into an over-the-top power ballad with changed lyrics that is just odd.
- Lyle Lovett and Al Green have a Grammy-winning country-soul fusion interpretation.
- Glen Campbell and Nelson have a terrific duet version of the song on Campbell’s final album, Adiós, with a lovely guitar version at the midpoint. (H/T Dave Smith, my music guru, for this one.) I also like Campbell’s cover of “She Still Thinks I Care” from this album.
There are dozens more versions of “Funny How Time Slips Away.”
What a song!
Note: If you’d like to get articles like this one—plus a lot more goodies and thinks worth your attention—via email, please sign up for my free newsletter: The Brad Berens Weekly Dispatch!
Full Lyrics of “Funny How Time Slips Away”
Well, hello there. My, it’s been a long, long time.
How am I doing? Oh, I guess that I’m doing fine.
It’s been so long now, but it seems now that it was only yesterday.
Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away?
How’s your new love? I hope that he’s doing fine.
I heard you told him that you’d love him till the end of time.
Now that’s the same thing that you told me, seems like just the other day.
Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away?
I gotta go now. I guess I’ll see you around.
Don’t know when though. Never know when I’ll be back in town.
But remember what I tell you: in time you’re gonna pay.
And it’s surprising how time slips away.
—Willie Nelson, 1961
Leave a Reply