Red-Headed Stranger |
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Released: May 1975 Charted: July 26, 1975 Peak: 28 US, 12 CW, -- UK, 90 CN, 88 AU Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, -- UK, 3.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: country |
Tracks:Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
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Rating: 4.301 out of 5.00 (average of 15 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:“In the early Seventies, Willie Nelson was a songwriter legend, with such classics as ‘Crazy’ and ‘Hello Walls’ behind him, but wasn't a major-league artist on his own. When his Nashville home burned down, he hightailed it back to Texas and began remaking himself as a country music outlaw, as he and such kindred, independent spirits as Waylon Jennings became known. With Red Headed Stranger, a self-produced (heresy to the Nashville establishment) concept album” TL that “perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced,” AMG “Nelson introduced a new sense of ambition and possibility to the genre.” TL “Red Headed Stranger tells the story of a renegade “preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover.” AMG The story is “told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing. It’s defiantly anticommercial and it demands intense concentration – all reasons why nobody thought it would be a hit, a story related in Chet Flippo’s liner notes to the 2000 reissue.” AMG “It was a phenomenal blockbuster, though;” AMG “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain was a Number One [country] single.” TL The success of the album helped in “establishing Nelson as a superstar recording artist in its own right.” AMG “For all its success, it still remains a prickly, difficult album, though, making the interspersed concept of Phases and Stages sound shiny in comparison. It’s difficult because it's old-fashioned, sounding like a tale told around a cowboy campfire. Now, this all reads well on paper, and there’s much to admire in Nelson's intimate gamble, but it's really elusive, as the themes get a little muddled and the tunes themselves are a bit bare. It's undoubtedly distinctive – and it sounds more distinctive with each passing year – but it's strictly an intellectual triumph and, after a pair of albums that were musically and intellectually sound, it's a bit of a letdown, no matter how successful it was.” AMG Regardless, the album could well be attributed to launching the outlaw country movement – “when Stranger was followed up with the breakthrough collection Wanted! The Outlaws (with Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser), country music had entered a new era – and Willie Nelson was an international superstar.” TL Notes:The 2000 CD reissue added “Bach Minuet in G,” “Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love with You,” “A Maiden’s Prayer,” and “Bonaparte’s Retreat.” |
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First posted 5/3/2008; last updated 3/21/2024. |
