To say Willie Nelson is old-fashioned is an understatement. As country music and the country it represents has shifted and evolved, Willieโs love songs and laid-back workingmanโs laments have fallen in and out of fashion. But even now, at age 83, Nelson is operating precisely how he did back in the โ60s. Heโs constantly on the road and releasing multiple albums a year, alternately trying out different styles and returning to his roots. In the time since his last collection of original songs, 2014โs diverse Band Of Brothers, he has recorded full-length tributes to both George Gershwin and Ray Price, sung on songs by Kacey Musgraves and Cyndi Lauper, and released an entire album of new collaborations with the late Merle Haggard. All the while, heโs toured his ass off โ through sickness and health โ and shown no signs of slowing down.
โThey say my pace would kill a normal man,โ Willie sings on his latest album, Godโs Problem Child, โbut Iโve never been accused of being normal anyway.โ The song is called โStill Not Deadโ and it makes no bones about its subject matter: โThe internet said I had passed away,โ he sings, โWell if I died I wasnโt dead to stay/And I woke up still not dead again today.โ โStill Not Deadโ has all the makings of a classic Willie Nelson song: funny in a sad way, sad in a funny way, and, despite its specificity to the octogenarian celebrity lifestyle, it could be sung by anyone who feels like the world is against them. Planted firmly at the center of Godโs Problem Child, โStill Not Deadโ is one of Willieโs modern masterpieces and the centrepiece of an album that can stand comfortably alongside any of his iconic work.
It helps that, even as heโs aged and wandered, Nelsonโs voice has mostly retained its power. On Godโs Problem Child, he sounds a bit like a weathered harmonica: he might have lost some of his higher notes, but he can soar through all the ones that count. The arrangements, which skew more toward classic country and slower tempos than Band Of Brothers, also help highlight Willieโs strengths. By this point, he knows precisely what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. Buddy Cannon, who has worked on almost all of Nelsonโs records over the last decade, is a fine collaborator here, and together, they find new ways for Willie to channel his old self. Many of the albumโs highlights arrive in its statelier, starker second half. โIt Gets Easierโ is as steady and true as any of his best relationship songs, while โLady Luckโ is an optimistic outlook at a downtrodden world.
As is to be expected from an artist losing more of his closest peers and collaborators with each passing year, Willie Nelson is haunted by death throughout Godโs Problem Child. Sometimes the presence is literal, as on the title track, which features one of the final vocal takes by songwriter Leon Russell. But the song is no death march: itโs a defiant, swampy ode to living outside the lines of society, something both singers speak to with authority. In โHe Wonโt Ever Be Goneโ, Nelson pays tribute to Merle Haggard, whose intrinsic toughness has always played as a foil to Willieโs more laconic wisdom. Over a bittersweet chord progression, Willie names the songs Merle wrote, recalls the โhigh timesโ they had together, and prays for the best afterlife a songwriter can dream of: that their songs will outlive them.
Despite the urgency of โHe Wonโt Ever Be Goneโ, its line of thinking โ that our work is what defines us โ is nothing new for Willie Nelson. While remaining endlessly prolific, he has always looked at the album as a totemic work, collecting songs in ways that add up to something bigger than the individual pieces. Letโs not forget that this is the songwriter who crafted one of country musicโs first concept records (1971โs Yesterdayโs Wine) and one of its first crossover standards collections (1978โs Stardust). Godโs Problem Child continues that traditionโapproaching life and love from angles that can only result from a career spent studying both with a restless sense of wonder. Itโs the kind of perspective that most songwriters can only dream of attaining: for Willie Nelson, itโs just another day at the office.