Songfacts®:

• This was written on the spur of the moment on an airsickness bag when Nelson was on a plane with Jerry Schatzberg, the director of the movie Honeysuckle Rose and its executive producer Sydney Pollack. He recalled to Uncut magazine: "They were looking for songs for the movie and they asked me if I had any idea. I said, 'What do you want the song to say?' and Sydney said, 'Can it be something about being on the road?' It just started to click. I said 'You mean like, On the road again, I can't wait to get on the road again?; They said, 'That's great. What's the melody?' I said, 'I don't know yet.'"
• This was a #1 Country hit for Willie Nelson, and also one of his biggest crossovers, reaching #20 on the Hot 100, his highest placing at the time. As a writer, Nelson crossed over with the Patsy Cline hit "Crazy," which reached #9 on the Hot 100 in 1961 and even reached the UK singles chart, placing at #14. He had many other hits as a writer, but his biggest hit as an artist is a song he didn't write: "Always On My Mind," which reached #5 in 1982 and sold over a million copies.
• Nelson starred in the 1980 movie Honeysuckle Rose, for which this was written. The movie was not a big success.
• A very lame joke for you: Did you hear Willie Nelson got hit by a car? Yeah, he was playing on the road again.
  
  Nelson heard variations of this one many times; he said it was funny "for a few years."
• This was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1980. Willie was bested by Irene Cara's "Fame." Willie did win a Grammy for "On the Road Again" in 1980 for Best Country Song. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Crystal - Springfield, MO
• This was #72 in RIAA's Songs of the Century, a list of the top 365 songs of the 20th century with historical significance in mind.
• This was one of three songs sung by the bird in Jerry Reed's 1982 album The Bird. The other two were "Whiskey River" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today."
• Nelson put off writing the melody for months until the day before he went to the studio to cut the song. "I saw no reason to put a melody to something I wasn't ready to record," he explained in his 1988 autobiography, Willie. "I knew I wouldn't have any problem pulling the melody out of the air."
• Willie Nelson appeared in a 2022 Super Bowl commercial for Skechers where this song plays throughout. The tagline: "Hit the road in Skechers."