| "You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Hank Williams with His Drifting Cowboys | ||||
| B-side | "Lost Highway" | |||
| Published | August 5, 1949 Acuff-Rose Publications,[1] | |||
| Released | September 9, 1949 | |||
| Recorded | March 2, 1949[2] | |||
| Studio | Castle Studio, Nashville | |||
| Genre | Country & Western, Honky-tonk | |||
| Length | 2:56 | |||
| Label | MGM K10506 | |||
| Songwriter | Hank Williams | |||
| Producer | Fred Rose | |||
| Hank Williams with His Drifting Cowboys singles chronology | ||||
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"You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)" is a song written by Hank Williams. It was released as a single on MGM Records in September 1949 and reached #4 on the Best Selling Retail Folk Records chart.[3]
"You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)" was the fourth in a remarkable string of twenty Top 10 hits that Williams would have between 1949 and his death on New Year's Day 1953. The song was a prime example of the typical Hank Williams A-side: an up-tempo, honky tonk number that could be danced to. In the song, the narrator accuses his wife of lying and warns her that she had better change her ways or he will make good on her empty threats to leave. Williams biographer Colin Escott writes that the song was "clearly born of the dissent on Charles Street,"[4] where Hank shared an often tempestuous home life with his wife Audrey Williams. He recorded the song with backing from Dale Potter (fiddle), Don Davis (steel guitar), Zeb Turner (lead guitar), Clyde Baum (mandolin), Jack Shook (rhythm guitar), and probably Ernie Newton (bass). It was cut at Castle Studio in Nashville on March 2, 1949 with Fred Rose producing.[5]
