Song · Gillian Welch
“The Way it Goes” by Gillian Welch
From the album The Harrow & The Harvest (2011)
“The Way it Goes” by Gillian Welch appears on 10 radio countdowns from 6 stations between 2011 and 2026. It was first released in 2011 on the album The Harrow & The Harvest. Its best result is #19 on the WRSI Top 93 Songs of 2011. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #51 indie & aaa song of 2011 and #1,983 indie & aaa song of all time.
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"The Way It Goes" comes from The Harrow & the Harvest, the 2011 record that ended the longest silence of Gillian Welch's career: eight years since Soul Journey. She and David Rawlings wrote it together, Rawlings produced, and Matt Andrews engineered.
The wait wasn't for lack of songs. Welch has said the pair had enough material for two or three records in that stretch but never liked any of it enough to see it through, and that their songcraft had simply slipped for a while, a rough patch that gave the album its title. The record that finally emerged earned a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 59 | Exit 97.7 Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY | WEXT Top 97 of 2011 | 97 |
| 2011 | 19 | WRSI 93.9 The River Northampton / Pioneer Valley, MA | WRSI Top 93 Songs of 2011 | 93 |
| 2011 | 47 | WXPN Philadelphia, PA | WXPN Year in Review: Top 100 Songs of 2011 | 100 |
| 2011 | 28 | WFUV New York, NY | WFUV Top 90 Songs of 2011 | 90 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 393 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Greatest Songs of the New Millennium (2013) | 885 |
| 2016 | 494 | WYEP | WYEP 913 Countdown 2016 | 913 |
| 2022 | 1043 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Colorado Sound Songs of All Time | 1055 |
| 2024 | 767 | WYEP | WYEP Best Songs of the Past 50 Years | 1049 |
| 2024 | 335 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Songs of the 21st Century | 1055 |
| 2026 | 836 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Songs You Discovered on The Colorado Sound | 1055 |
Also listed as: The Way It Goes.
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