Stardust by Willie Nelson

Stardust, Willie Nelson's 22nd studio album, came out on Columbia in April 1978, and on paper it looked like a crazy gamble: the outlaw who'd made his name with Red Headed Stranger turning in ten old American pop standards, handpicked from his own favorites. The suits at Columbia fretted. They needn't have. It started when Nelson asked his Malibu neighbor Booker T. Jones to arrange "Moonlight in Vermont"; he liked the result so much that he handed Jones the whole album to produce, and they knocked it out in ten days.

What they made is about as relaxed as a record gets: Nelson's weathered, behind-the-beat phrasing floating through "Stardust", "Blue Skies", "Unchained Melody" and "Georgia on My Mind" over spare, easy backing, the old standards turned into late-night Texas porch music. "Blue Skies" topped the country singles chart and "Georgia on My Mind" won him a Grammy. The album went to number 1 on the country albums chart, stayed on it for ten years, went quintuple platinum and entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.