Red Headed Stranger

📖 About this album

Willie Nelson's 1975 concept album, a sparse narrative Western about a preacher on the run after killing his unfaithful wife. A pivotal record in the development of outlaw country.

📝 Our review

Red Headed Stranger is a country epic narrated in barely 24 minutes. Willie Nelson took the concept album format — almost unheard of in Nashville — and told the story of a preacher who kills his wife. The sparse, near-demo production was radical for its time. «Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain» gave him his first number one. A record that reshaped alt-country before the term existed.

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