Hank Williams – Why Should We Try Anymore

“Why Should We Try Anymore” is a country song written by Hank Williams and recorded with His Drifting Cowboys for MGM Records. Copyright entries show it was published by Acuff-Rose on April 7, 1950. Williams cut the master at Castle Studio in Nashville on January 9, 1950 with producer Fred Rose, and MGM released the single in August 1950 as catalogue 10760. The record was issued with “They’ll Never Take Her Love from Me” on the B-side and is generally classified as country & western, honky-tonk and country blues.

The January 9, 1950 session that produced “Why Should We Try Anymore” was one of Williams’s most productive early dates for MGM. Documentation lists Jerry Rivers on fiddle, Don Helms on steel guitar, Bob McNett on lead guitar, Jack Shook on rhythm guitar and Ernie Newton on bass, with Rose supervising from the control room. Several key titles were recorded that day, including “Long Gone Lonesome Blues,” “Why Don’t You Love Me” and “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy,” helping to define the tight, amplified honky-tonk sound associated with Williams’s peak years.

In terms of style and subject matter, commentators often describe “Why Should We Try Anymore” as a darker companion to “Why Don’t You Love Me.” Whereas the earlier hit mixes frustration with a degree of self-mockery, this later song presents a more bleak picture of a marriage that has broken down. Biographer Colin Escott notes that its four verses were loosely based on the Ernest Tubb number “I’m Not Coming Home Any More,” but Williams reshaped the idea into his own kind of “heart song,” emphasising resignation and emotional exhaustion rather than humour.

Lyrically, the narrator catalogues evidence that the relationship cannot be repaired: constant quarrels, lack of affection and the feeling that both partners have reached the end of their patience. Each verse circles back to the central question implied by the title—if love and trust are gone, why continue to pretend? The language is plain and conversational, built around short lines and repeated phrases, a structure typical of Williams’s writing. Unlike some of his more narrative songs, there is no clear storyline or resolution; the lyric simply documents the recognition that a shared life has failed.

Musically, “Why Should We Try Anymore” is a slow, blues-tinged waltz. The arrangement places Williams’s vocal in front of a restrained backing: acoustic guitar and bass provide a three-beat pulse, while steel guitar and fiddle supply spare fills between phrases. The tempo is considerably more subdued than many of his jukebox-oriented singles from 1950, underlining the song’s sombre tone. Rose kept the running time to around two minutes and thirty-nine seconds, in line with radio and jukebox norms, but allowed enough space for Helms’s high steel lines to answer the vocal and reinforce key emotional moments.

On release, the record achieved moderate but not spectacular success compared with some of Williams’s other singles of the period. Billboard’s country charts show “Why Should We Try Anymore” peaking at No. 9 in 1950, while its B-side “They’ll Never Take Her Love from Me” climbed higher, reaching No. 5. This pattern—where a slower, more pessimistic A-side was outperformed by a somewhat more immediately appealing flip side—has been noted in several histories of Williams’s career and used to illustrate the commercial preference at the time for brisker juke joint songs over darker ballads.

Despite being overshadowed on the charts, “Why Should We Try Anymore” has remained part of the core Hank Williams catalogue. It later appeared on the 1957 MGM LP Sing Me a Blue Song and has been included on major compilations such as 40 Greatest Hits and The Complete Hank Williams. The song has also attracted a number of cover versions: Ferlin Husky, Hank Williams Jr. (sometimes in duet settings) and Waylon Jennings are among those who have recorded it, and Willie Nelson’s box set A Classic and Unreleased Collection also features a rendition. These later recordings, together with repeated reissues of the original MGM master, have helped keep “Why Should We Try Anymore” in circulation as one of Williams’s key early-1950s “heart songs,” representative of the more somber side of his writing during a commercially successful period.