This week, Willie Nelson and Ringo Starr prove age ain’t nothin’ but a number.
“Coyotes”
Ken Pomeroy featuring John Moreland
Written by McKenan Pomeroy
Jonathan Keefe: When a songwriter of John Moreland’s caliber is game to collaborate, you should feel confident that you’ve written something great, and that’s the case here. Pomeroy’s a few years removed from a promising debut record, and she contributed one of the better tracks on the underwhelming Twisters soundtrack earlier this summer.
Still, “Coyotes” is a significant step up from work that was already awfully good.
What Pomeroy shares with Moreland is an ability to tie a narrative to a distinct sense of place. The details employed here are things that I imagine ring with a particular sense of truth in specific corners of the Midwest. Without having to fact-check those details, they make “Coyotes” all the more believable because Pomeroy sounds like someone who absolutely knows what she’s talking about.
The one liability here is a flatness in the vocal performances. Pomeroy’s an empathetic singer, but her range is fairly limited, while Moreland is sounding more and more like Tom Waits with every new recording. As singers, well, they’re both phenomenal songwriters. But is “Coyotes” ever an impressive song. B
Kevin John Coyne: I fully agree about the impeccable songwriting. This haunting ballad could be killer in the hands of, say, Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson.
As is, it sounds like a sparse demo recording waiting to be discovered by a resourceful A&R guy for the soundtrack to a Dust Bowl period piece. B-
“Time On My Hands”
Ringo Starr
Written by T Bone Burnett, Paul Kennerley, and Daniel Tashian
KJC: Ringo Starr could’ve been a country singer in another life and pulled it off with aplomb. After all, the man was twanging up the Help! soundtrack sixty years ago. Sixty years ago!
So “Time On My Hands” isn’t a late life crossover attempt by an old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member looking to piggyback on the country genre’s current popularity with veteran pop and rock acts. It’s just a solid country song that could’ve been cut as easily by Faron Young or Jim Reeves back in Ringo’s Beatles days and done just fine for them. B
JK: Tempting, really, to write a screed about genre interlopers and how they’re taking up space that should be occupied by “authentic” ‘Merican country acts. But why even make the effort at satire here? It’s Ringo Starr, and it’s a single that stands wholly on its merits as a fine country record.
Producer and co-writer Burnett has capitalized on Starr’s genre affinity in ways that make this fully of a piece with the country and country-adjacent work Starr’s been low-key doing throughout his career. It sounds like what I’d have expected a Ringo Starr country single to sound like at any point in the last, say, two decades.
Do I wish it were a bit more distinct and sounded a bit less like everything else Burnett has produced since the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack? I sure do. But is this still something I’ll return to, gladly and often? Sure is. B+
“I Never Lie”
Zach Top
Written by Carson Chamberlain, Tim Nichols, and Zach Top
JK: This is such a familiar genre trope that it could be easy to dismiss “I Never Lie” as mere pastiche. But there’s a reason this particular song has gotten some real traction on streaming platforms while “Sounds Like the Radio” snail-crawls through the mid-20s of the country airplay chart.
The specificity of Top’s references and the good humor with which he delivers his series of little lies makes this one of the most approachable and engaging singles to hit the mainstream this year. Really, it’s the self-deprecation as much as the self-deception that makes this one work. It’s the best song of its kind since Dolly’s “The Grass is Blue.” A
KJC: Zach Top gets closer to the nineties country platonic ideal here than he did on his previous singles. “I Never Lie” has one of those insidious nineties country choruses that earworms its way into your brain, ingratiating itself with repeated listens. When the full production of the chorus kicks in, with the background harmonies and muscular instrumentation, it hits my nostalgia sweet spot, and it’s like I’m humming along with any one of the hits that I love from that era.
My challenge with “I Never Lie” is that this nostalgia inevitably invites comparisons to the records from that golden era. This could’ve been released as is and become a top five single out of the box for a new artist in the peak of country’s hat act phase. If it had been released back then, it would’ve been a song that I picked up on cassette single and put in mixtape rotation for a few weeks, only occasionally revisiting it afterwards. A step or two above a Jeff Carson jam but not quite in the league of Doug Supernaw’s efforts.
The way he stretches out the terminal word of each verse line is on par with Not a Moment Too Soon – era Tim McGraw, and that’s just not gonna cut it next to Tracy Lawrence and Mark Chesnutt on my playlists. If you’re going to give me something this derivative of nineties country, you’ve got to be able to hang with the big boys. McGraw got there pretty quickly back in the day. Maybe Top will, too. B-
“Lost Cause”
Willie Nelson
Written by Beck
KJC: We talk so much at Country Universe about how the unique perspectives of artists from historically silenced identities can shed new light even on old material. This powerful Beck cover draws nearly all of its strength from Willie Nelson’s perspective as a ninety year old man. This is a voice that vanishingly few of us will ever speak with ourselves, and should we be among the rare group of people who reach that age, who’s going to take the time to listen?
What makes Nelson’s take on “Lost Cause” so powerful for me is that he doesn’t have time to waste anymore on a lost cause, no matter how much love he may hold in his heart for her. This is a man whose days are winding down, and he’s choosing himself in those final years after wasting so much time already. A
JK: I love Beck’s country and folk efforts; Mutations, his proper alt-country album, remains my pick for his best overall record, and the lovely and somber Sea Change mines similar territory. “Lost Cause” was he of the standouts on that latter album, and hearing a genre titan like Willie Nelson cover it only serves to highlight how well Beck understands the structure and form of country songs.
The advance singles from Nelson’s latest album have, to a one, been among the finest of his entire career, and I say that without hyperbole and with full understanding of exactly how great he is and has always been. This is a phenomenal interpretation of a great song, and the production here splits the difference between Beck’s more junkyard aesthetic and Nelson’s classic sounds.
It tracks with the quality of his late-career run that he’d have some of the year’s finest music, but who’d have thought Willie Nelson would be dropping some of the most progressive-sounding music of 2024? A
This is such a familiar genre trope that it could be easy to dismiss “I Never Lie” as mere pastiche
Can’t lie, I had a similar take upon hearing it. But Top sings the fire out of it and the instrumentation is on-point. It’s my favorite song from the album, and I’m happy to see it released as a single. I hope it does well.
Re. Ringo: It might do us all a bit of good to remember that Ringo’s second post-Beatles solo album, 1970’s Beaucups Of Blues, was recorded with the Nashville session mafia and is very much of a piece of C&W from Mr. Starkey. It wasn’t all that successful then, but now it is something of a cult item.
And we all should remember some of the Beatles more C&W-style things, both as a group (“I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party”; “I’ll Cry Instead”; “I’m A Loser”; “Act Naturally” (the cover of Buck Owens’ 1963 classic); “I’ve Just Seen A Face”; “What Goes On?”; “Don’t Pass Me By”; “Rocky Raccoon”, etc.), and in their solo work (“Crippled Inside” [John Lennon’; “The No No Song” [Ringo, written by Hoyt Axton]); “Sally G” [Paul McCartney and Wings]).