This week's RTÉ Radio 1 Album of the Week is God's Problem Child by Willie Nelson.
What we say: And they say that smoking pot makes you lazy? At 84, the Redheaded Stranger is On The Road Again with a spirited set that includes seven new Willie originals, a title track co-written by swamp-rock legend Tony Joe White (of Polk Salad Annie fame) and He Won't Ever Be Gone, a touching tribute to fallen comrade Merle Haggard. Mortality is on Willie's mind, an issue he tackles on the irreverent Not Dead Yet: "Well I woke up still not dead again today/The internet said I had passed away/But if I died I wasn’t dead to stay/And I woke up still not dead again today,"
Willie even gives a state of the nation address in Delete and Fast Forward - it's fair to say that he's not a fan of the new U.S. president: "We had a chance to be brilliant/And we blew it again." Did we mention that it's his sixty-ninth studio album?
What he says: "We have other stuff we’ve recorded, tracks that we stacked up through the years that we haven’t put out, so there’s probably another album or two back there like that."
What the critics are saying:
Written partly over text messages with his co-writer Buddy Cannon, Willie Nelson’s latest album finds the cosmic joker contemplating mortality with endearing humor and touching honesty. (Pitchfork)
Old age has sharpened Nelson's focus as a songwriter, providing him with renewed purpose as a lyricist and heightened vulnerability as a vocalist. (Rolling Stone)
Whether through his raspy, slightly-behind-the-beat cadence, the ancient twang of his battle-scarred guitar sidekick Trigger or reverence for the genre that he arguably helped shepherd through the latter half of the 20th century and into the new millennium, Nelson is the consummate country artist. (Pop Matters)
Listen to God's Problem Child in full below, via Spotify:
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