Willie Nelson - Heroes on CD

Description

Product Description Heroes is the eagerly-awaited album of new songs and re-imagined classics performed by Willie Nelson, America's legendary outlaw country music avatar. Heroes is essential Willie Nelson, a seamless collection of top-flight pop-country songs. It includes a cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist” which recently debuted to great acclaim as the soundtrack to an animated short film commercial during the US Super Bowl. There are also covers from the 30s and 40s and new songs by Willie, his sons, Lukas Nelson and Micah Nelson, and "Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die", a new track featuring special guests Snoop Dogg, Kris Kristofferson and Jamey Johnson. All songs are performed with the easy-going homespun warmth and honesty that have become Willie’s trademarks. The album opens with Willie and Merle Haggard joining forces on a powerful new rendition of Wayne ("The Letter," "Always On My Mind") Carson's "A Horse Called Music" (the title song from Willie's 1989 album). Other brand-new Willie Nelson compositions making their debut on Heroes are "Hero," featuring guest appearances by Jamey Johnson and Billy Joe Shaver, and "Come On Back Jesus" featuring Nelson’s sons Lukas Nelson and Micah Nelson. The collection includes a sublime interpretation of Pearl Jam's "Just Breathe," performed with son Lukas, Lukas also performs with his dad on several of the album's other tracks including a droll soulful take on the Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan composition, "Come On Up To The House," sung with Sheryl Crow. Lukas has penned three songs for the album; "No Place To Fly," "Every Time He Drinks He Thinks of Her," and "The Sound of Your Memory" (cowritten with Elizabeth Rainey). Willie revisits the roots of classic country with three pre-rock gems: the 1930's ballad "My Window Faces The South," Fred Rose's immortal "Home In San Antone" from 1943, and 1949's "Cold War With You," a still timely take on the battle of the sexes with guest artist Ray Price. (Price made Willie's composition, "Night Life," a smash in 1960 and Willie served as a member of Ray's band, the Cherokee Cowboys). Review Still playing, still with a twinkle in his eye, Willie Nelson at 79 sounds like a man with nothing to prove. And he’s all the better for that. Those who have missed out on a recording career that began in 1956 will get a pointer from Roll Me Up – a rollicking piece of mischief recorded with Snoop Dogg while Willie had a marijuana charge still pending in El Paso. And if that sounds a little messy, the album is actually a return to simple virtues after a couple of outings where Johnny Mandel and then T-Bone Burnett dictated the style. Buddy Cannon’s unfussy production measures out pedal steel, accordion, and Mickey Raphael’s dependable harmonica round a pin-sharp rhythm section. There’s no stricter theme than a lucky-bag of genres and guest singers that all hang on a legend. It’s an easy brew to enjoy, too. The range takes in the roistering, exemplary Western swing of My Window Faces the South (written in 1937) and Home in San Antone (1943) to wistful readings of Floyd Tillman’s Cold War With You and Tom Waits’ Come On Up to the House. Old compadres Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Billy Joe Shaver and Kris Kristofferson jostle for the honours of grizzled sidekick, and Sheryl Crow is soulful on the Waits song. There’s a degree of torch-passing as well, with three songs by Willie’s son Lukas, whose voice echoes his father’s dauntless quaver. Lukas’ Every Time He Drinks He Thinks of Her sits comfortably with the standards, likewise Cannon’s That’s All There Is to This Song and Willie’s own Hero. And if the hour ever drags, it’s on the Pearl Jam (Just Breathe) and Coldplay (The Scientist) covers; one talent Willie Nelson has never boasted is the rock-style gravitas of a Johnny Cash. But if anyone asks how Heroes differs from the 65 Willie Nelson studio albums that preceded it, the happy answer is: not much. The expressive, intimate tenor, the matchless mu