Some songs have to wait for their moment.
Mind Over Matter has been sitting at the end of Waylon's Time Jumper since November last year.
Track ten.
The last song.
And perhaps the quietest surprise on the record.
So seeing it return almost a year later as a standalone single was unexpected.
A good decision, though.
Because this song deserves the extra room.
Time Jumper is a country record with movement in it. There are faster songs, bigger arrangements and plenty of moments where Waylon and the band simply get on with it.
Then comes Mind Over Matter.
Everything settles.
Waylon does too.
And that may be the reason the song stays with you.
He has a voice that can easily fill a room. We know that.
Here, he holds it back.
He sings with patience. Leaves space around the words. Lets the roughness in his voice do its own work.
No hurry.
Nearly five minutes of it.
Good.
The song came together much faster.
Waylon has said that Mind Over Matter was written very quickly during the period surrounding the Time Jumper sessions. The album itself was recorded at Ocean Way in Nashville as part of what he described as a trip down memory lane: back towards the country music that had been with him since childhood.
Johnny Cash.
Waylon Jennings.
Old records at home.
Years later, Waylon was recording his own country album in Nashville, with Jennings' former studio sitting across the road.
Life occasionally has a decent sense of timing.
But Mind Over Matter would acquire another meaning after it was written.
Waylon's friend Robby Turner died several months before Time Jumper was released.
Turner had played pedal steel with Waylon Jennings and had become part of Waylon's own Nashville story.
Mind Over Matter was his favourite song on the album.
Waylon later said there was also a great deal of who and what he is inside the song.
You don't need much more than that.
Listen again.
Suddenly the restraint makes even more sense.
Among the quicker country songs on Time Jumper, Mind Over Matter always felt slightly separate. As the closing track, it changed the temperature of the record.
The band slows down.
Waylon leaves more air in his vocal.
And the album ends somewhere quieter than where it spent much of its time.
That worked beautifully as a closing track.
It works differently on its own.
There is no album around it now.
Nothing to arrive from.
Nothing afterwards.
Just Waylon and a country song that knows exactly how much space it needs.
Maybe that is why bringing it forward now feels right.
Some album tracks do their job perfectly where they are.
Every once in a while, one deserves a larger audience.
Mind Over Matter is one of those songs.