When I was much younger, I remember going to my Uncle Tony’s
\nhouse for family celebrations of certain holidays. My uncle has,
\nfor as long as I can remember, been into country music – and when I
\nwas much younger, I absolutely hated country. So one year, while he
\nwas happily playing his new Willie Nelson tape
\nStardust<\/i> for the family, I think I was trying to crawl
\nunderneath the jukebox he once owned.<\/p>\n
That was 20 years ago – and now that I’m older and have
\ndeveloped an appreciation for Nelson’s music (as well as country in
\ngeneral), I can understand what my uncle was so excited about with
\nthis release. Were it not for this album, Nelson might have only
\nbeen known in the country music circuit as one of the leaders of
\n“outlaw” country music. Instead, with this collection of old pop
\nfavorites that Nelson grew up on, he was able to bridge the gap
\nbetween the two genres of music long before the term “crossover”
\nwould be used to describe an artist. Recently re-released with two
\nadditional tracks, it is an album that’s sure to send people
\nscrambling to replace their well-worn records and cassettes.<\/p>\n
Nelson’s vocal delivery might not always be the strongest, but
\noften he makes up in emotion what he lacks in style. It is
\ninteresting to hear Nelson take on songs like “Unchained Melody”
\nand give them his own unique spin. While there’s the slimmest of
\nchances that he’ll knock the Righteous Brothers’ version out of
\nyour memory, Nelson does a respectable job on this song, as well as
\nthe others on
\nStardust<\/i>.<\/p>\n
If you’re not very familiar with the source material, you’d
\nswear that Nelson wrote songs like “Georgia On My Mind” and
\n“Scarlet Ribbons,” the latter one of the two rediscovered tracks
\nrecorded during these sessions and added to the CD. But the fact
\nis, Nelson didn’t write note one on
\nStardust<\/i>; all of these tracks are covers – and almost every
\none of them are performed so lovingly that Nelson has succeeded in
\nmaking the songs his own. From Nelson’s unique vocal stylings to
\nhis picking on his beat-to-hell classical guitar, listening to
\nthese tracks unfold is pure magic.<\/p>\n
How do you pick one or two songs off
\nStardust<\/i> to highlight as tracks to make sure you listen to?
\nSimply put, I can’t; from the title track all the way through
\n“Someone To Watch Over Me” (the track that ended the original
\nrelease of
\nStardust<\/i>), this whole album is a must-experience wonder. The
\nonly miscue, in fact, comes on Nelson’s cover of Johnny Nash’s “I
\nCan See Clearly Now”. The original reggae flavor of the song is
\ngone, and Nelson just doesn’t seem to ever get into a groove with
\nthis one. Still, we’re talking one mistake – and it’s a late
\naddition, so that’s not a bad average at all.<\/p>\n
If
\nStardust<\/i> did anything for Nelson, it widened his exposure to
\nan entirely new market. Had it not been for this track, I’d
\nquestion if later songs like “On The Road Again” would have become
\nsmash hits – or whether tracks like “To All The Girls I’ve Loved
\nBefore,” his duet with Julio Iglesias, would ever have happened.
\nStardust<\/i> turned Nelson from an “outlaw” to a pop songsmith –
\nand for that, we should all be thankful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6148],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-36302","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-willie-nelson","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36302"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36302"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}