Just in time for Independence Day and the song’s 20th anniversary, Darryl Worley has released “Have We Forgotten,” a remake of his 2003 hit, “Have You Forgotten?”
The updated version reunites Worley and Wynn Varble as co-writers and employs a first-person narrative with the collective noun “we,” as opposed to its original’s second-person point of view.
Specific references to war, the Pentagon and Osama Bin Laden are swapped out for sentiments of unity, as well.
“Red states and blue states, left versus right / Seems like all we ever do is fuss and fight
/ I ain’t pointing fingers, hell I’m guilty too / But how much more of this can we go through?” Worley sings candidly in a verse.
Lyrically, “Have We Forgotten” finds Worley looking back on the past and observing the changes in the United States over the last two decades. Through reflection, he realizes that Americans need to come together now more than ever to heal the divide that’s tearing the country apart.
“Have we forgotten who we really are? / All the storms we’ve had to weather and how we ever got this far / Have we forgotten how it used to be / When we could still sit down together and agree to disagree / And the common good was what we had in common / Have we forgotten? / Have we forgotten?” Worley sings in the powerful chorus, calling for both action and change in America.
“One of the first times we played ‘Have You Forgotten?’ live back then was on the Grand Ole Opry. The incredible response we received from that performance is how it all started,” the singer recalls to the press. “We recently decided to sit down and write a new lyric for the song that’s appropriate for this day and time with what’s happening in our country today.”
“For the new version ‘Have We Forgotten,’ we wanted to be certain we said what we were truly feeling in our hearts and didn’t compromise what we believe in, which is exactly how it went down with the original. I’m very proud of the message of the song,” he adds.
For this new release, Worley reunited Big Machine Label Group’s Scott Borchetta, Allison Jones, George Briner and Jimmy Harnen — who all worked at his previous label home DreamWorks — to present the track to the world once again.
The Top Country Songs of 2023, Ranked
The best country songs of 2023 fit snug over your life and experiences. Each is written from personal experiences, but somehow, that translates as if it were custom to each of us. We’ve loved, we’ve longed, we’ve lost and we’ve cut loose in the country.
Airplay charts, sales data and streaming numbers helped make this list of country music’s top songs of 2023, but staff and Taste of Country reader opinion were most influential. Songs included on previous Top Country Songs lists were not eligible. A song may have been released in 2022, but it had to have the majority of recorded airplay or impact this year to count.