VOL № E135 — March 2024
COMING SOON: Phases and Stages by Willie Nelson will be the March 2024 Essentials Record of the Month. You're on the interest list and will be notified when it becomes available. Sign up to be notified by email when this album launches.
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Willie Nelson wants it known, despite being divorced twice and married thrice before writing the album — including one that was spurred by his second wife finding a maternity ward bill from his eventual third — that Phases and Stages is and was not autobiographical. “The overall theme was not a reflection of my own life,” he said in his 2015 biography It’s A Long Story: My Life. “I was simply making up a story. Sure, I’d gone through breakups and heartaches of my own. What human soul hasn’t?” But when you make an album like Phases and Stages, the most devastating, humanistic divorce record of all time — and be beaten by an ex-wife after she sews you into your sheets — people begin to believe the album is about you and your ex-wives.
LP 1 / Side A
| 1 Phases and Stages (Theme)/Washing The Dishes |
| 2 Phases and Stages (Theme)/Walkin' |
| 3 Pretend I Never Happened |
| 4 Sister's Coming Home/Down At The Corner Beer Joint |
| 5 (How Will I Know) I'm Falling In Love Again |
LP 1 / Side B
| 1 Bloody Mary Morning |
| 2 Phases and Stages (Theme)/No Love Around |
| 3 I Still Can't Believe You're Gone |
| 4 It's Not Supposed To Be That Way |
| 5 Heaven and Hell |
| 6 Phases and Stages (Theme) Pick Up The Tempo/Phases and Stages (Theme) |
