The nation legend sings about escaping grief and the mysteries of the street on his newest album, and provides an epic story-song about immigration to his catalog
The truth that Willie Nelson remains to be touring at 91 is commonly celebrated as a feat of superhuman endurance — he simply delivered an distinctive set at Stagecoach Competition and is on the street all summer time with Bob Dylan. However Nelson’s recording output in his golden years is simply as spectacular. Within the final 10 years alone, he’s launched 16 totally different studio albums that, amongst different conceits, ruminated on mortality and misplaced relationships, paid homage to the songs of Frank Sinatra and George Gershwin, and reinvented his personal materials as bluegrass rave-ups.
Nelson has by no means been shy about difficult his listeners with delicate social messages too — from homosexual marriage rights to the ability of the poll field — and it’s no coincidence that he titled his newest album The Border throughout a time when all eyes are on the invisible line separating the U.S. from Mexico.
The title observe to the album (his 152nd in the event you’re counting) is definitely a canopy of Rodney Crowell and Allen Shamblin’s 2019 tune a couple of border guard consumed by his thankless work and the desperation he witnesses. “From the shacks and the shanties, come the hungry and poor/Some to drown on the crossing, some to undergo no extra,” he sings in a lament. It’s one of many Pink Headed Stranger’s most transferring and cinematic latter-day recordings, a story-song wherein the toll and complexity of the immigration problem stings you within the face as exhausting as desert sand. (The album’s cowl photograph is of Massive Bend Nationwide Park, proper on the border between Texas and Mexico).
Produced by Nelson’s longtime collaborator Buddy Cannon, the album contains 4 new Nelson/Cannon co-writes. “As soon as Upon a Yesterday” jumps again to Willie’s childhood days when “time was standing nonetheless”; “What If I’m Out of My Thoughts” lets him query his sanity, one in every of his favourite lyrical tropes; and “Kiss Me When You’re By way of” permits a lover to interrupt his coronary heart repeatedly, so long as they seal it with a smooch. But it surely’s “How A lot Does It Price” that stands aside, with its opening question — “How a lot does it price to be free?” — and Willie reflecting on the curse of being a songwriter who’s “all the time attempting to make all of it rhyme.”
At 91, Nelson has weathered many a current loss. His greatest pal and drummer Paul English died in 2020, and his sister Bobbie Nelson handed two years later, adopted this February by the demise of singing buddy Toby Keith. Willie returns to the concept of grief and the uncertainty of what’s in retailer within the observe “Many a Lengthy and Lonesome Freeway,” one other Crowell tune that offers The Border its coronary heart and Nelson another alternative to sing in regards to the thriller of the street.
“To shake my world of grieving/I assume I’ll go on till it’s gone,” he croons, staring unflinchingly on the freeway that lies forward. He vows to journey it — very similar to his profession — on his personal phrases: “And ultimately, I’ll do it my approach.”