Songfacts®:

• Hunter Hayes penned this driving, anthemic song with Barry Dean and Martin Johnson. It finds him singing about that happy recognition that the strong emotional feelings he once had for someone have disappeared and he's ready to move on.
  
  "I've been on such an incredible journey this past year, not just musically but personally as well," Hayes said. "There's always been that next goal to reach, whether it was a single or an album or an arena tour, and this is the first time I've really been able to kind of step back from all of that and just let my instincts and creativity flow. I've waited a long time to get this new music out, and 'Yesterday's Song' really captures that free feeling, that joyous realization that you're moving on and starting this fresh, new chapter."
• Hayes told Billboard magazine the song is about moving on, and not just from the relationship that the lyrics imply. "For me, personally, it's about moving on in different ways," he explained. "It's an energetic song about letting go of something in the past and not even just walking away from it but racing towards the future and just truly, honestly letting it go - with a little bit of attitude, maybe."
• The song's surreal music video was directed by Ryan Hamblin and features Hayes wandering through an abandoned building when he comes across a shattered disco ball on the ground, Hayes embarks on a journey as clips of him in his younger days play on the mirrors around him. The artist explained to Travel + Leisure that the visual expresses visually his take on the song's lyrics.
  
  "The whole thing was just carefully sang about not letting your past determine who you always will be," he said. "That's why I wanted the mirror thing. Mirrors are such a great visual version of the movement that can happen. Mirrors can kind of block you in."
  
  "And looking back the wrong way can kind of be deceiving. You have to dream about your future, you've got to shape your future, you've got to look towards your future," Hayes continued. "Embrace your past, embrace everything that it made you and know that it made you stronger to carry on and move on."
• Hunter Hayes penned the song to process his feelings following a breakup. "It's kind of masked as a breakup song because I definitely have been through that and was feeling that a little bit still left over at the time," he admitted to Taste of Country. "So you channel both of those things into the song and I was hoping to give people kind of the right to feel like they could move on through the song."