| Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way | |
| Cover: | File:Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way US vinyl.png |
| Caption: | One of A-side labels of the U.S. vinyl single |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Waylon Jennings |
| Album: | Dreaming My Dreams |
| B-Side: | Bob Wills Is Still the King |
| Released: | August 1975 |
| Recorded: | September 2, 1974[1] |
| Genre: | Outlaw country[2] |
| Length: | 3:02 |
| Label: | RCA Nashville |
| Prev Title: | Dreaming My Dreams with You |
| Prev Year: | 1975 |
| Next Title: | Can't You See |
| Next Year: | 1976 |
"Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Waylon Jennings. It was released in August 1975 as the first single from the album Dreaming My Dreams. The song was Jennings' third number one on the country chart as a solo artist, and it remained at number one for one week and spent a total of sixteen weeks on the country charts.[3] The song was one of many major hits for Jennings, and became an anthem of the outlaw country movement, as well as the wider genre.
The B-side to "Are You Sure ..." was "Bob Wills is Still the King", a tribute to the music of Wills. Although it never charted on its own, "Bob Wills ... " gained airplay and continues to be a staple at classic country radio stations.
Jennings, one of the driving forces of the outlaw country movement, released Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way at the height of the movement's success. The song, penned by Jennings on the back of an envelope, captured the singer's frustration with the direction country music had taken over the previous two decades, largely as a result of the control country record labels held over their artists, and the resultant "Nashville sound".
The song pays homage to the influence of country music legend Hank Williams Sr. on the genre, and criticizes the glitz that had come to characterize top-selling country artists in the 1970s, through references to "rhinestone suits" and "new shiny cars"; as well as the stagnant, uninspired sound that resulted from the commercially-focused Nashville producers: "Lord it's the same old tune, fiddle and guitar; Where do we take it from here?"[4]
The song's lyrics also refer to the recording industry's treatment of artists, which included relentless touring schedules leading to singers such as Jennings relying heavily on amphetamines and other drugs: "Ten years on the road making one night stands, speeding my young life away". The end of each verse rhetorically calls into question whether Hank Williams made music this way: "Tell me one more time, just so's I'll understand: are you sure Hank done it this way? Did ol' Hank really do it this way?"
At a concert in 1975, in the introduction to the song, Jennings remarked: "I wrote this song in ten minutes; took me ten years to think it up, though", referencing his decade-long struggle to fight for artistic control and challenge the Nashville establishment.
Rolling Stone labelled it the "closest things outlaw country has to a mission statement".[5]
Country band Alabama covered the song in 2010 for the Waylon Jennings tribute album, The Music Inside: A Collaboration Dedicated to Waylon Jennings, Volume One, which was released on February 8, 2011. Alabama's version was released as a single on December 13, 2010, via The Valory Music Co.