Willie Nelson - Songbird
Of late, Willie Nelson has been ripe for a career renaissance on par with Rick Rubin’s early-’90s resurrection of Johnny Cash. Ryan Adams no doubt spotted that potential and with “Songbird,” a record that is pretty much his vision from start to finish, Nelson is very likely on the cusp of enjoying bigger acclaim and certainly more street cred with younger generations. Featuring a heady and vaguely unusual mix of covers (for Nelson, at least), “Songbird” includes versions of songs by the Grateful Dead (”Stella Blue”), Harlan Howard, Leonard Cohen (”Hallelujah”) and Gram Parsons. Parsons’ “$1,000 Wedding” wins you over slowly, and “Blue Hotel” is a B3-drenched jewel. But it’s the shimmering beauty of the title track, an overhaul of the Christine McVie-penned Fleetwood Mac tune, where Adams and Nelson’s styles most seamlessly, and quite beautifully, mesh.
