![]() ![]() She admits that going toe-to-toe with artists like Nelson and Robinson was intimidating. “The new thing here was that we were making them into duets.” ![]() They have lasted and endured for so many years,” she says. While each remake has its own flair, Wilson says it was important “to not veer too far from what the originals were. “When Elvis came in with that vocal, it was so surprising because it was like he put all that longing and all of that emotion and desire into ” (Wilson and husband Tom Hanks are good friends with Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, and Wilson adds that Springsteen has heard the new version and gave it a “thumbs up.”) “He comes in hot, I love it so much,” Wilson says. That certainly seems the case with Costello, who turns Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire” (also a hit for the Pointer Sisters) into a delightfully spirited romp. “I thought they would have more fun doing songs that weren’t their own,” Wilson says. ![]() Though some of her duet partners - like Costello, Nelson, Robinson and Browne - were already registering their own hits in the ‘70s, she opted against remaking songs they had already made famous themselves. “Imagine a couple at an altar, getting married and saying those things to each other.” “It’s almost like vows you would say to each other,” she says. Nelson was the first to sign on for a re-imagining of Paul Simon’s “Slip Slidin’ Away” as a discussion between a couple in a long-term relationship.Ĭonversely, with Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird,” Wilson and Josh Groban approached the song as if they were new partners starting their life together. Then they began reaching out to her wish list of partners to cast the album. Wilson and co-producer Matt Rollings took their initial list of close to 150 ‘70s tunes and whittled them down to ones they could remake as duets (the only song on the album originally recorded by a duo is Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway’s “Where Is the Love”). “It was how do you take the story and reinvent it as a duet, a conversation between two people,” she says. 27) on her own Orchard-distributed Sing It Loud imprint, features the singer/actress performing primarily soft-rock hits from the ‘70s, such as “Without You,” “Crazy Love,” “Slip Slidin’ Away”and “If,” with a cadre of male artists, including legends Willie Nelson and Smokey Robinson, as well as country stars Keith Urban, Tim McGraw and Vince Gill, among others.įor Wilson, these revered songs are her version of the Great American Songbook, the term given to many jazz and Broadway show tunes released between the 1920s and 1950s that have become standards. “I have a theory that some of those songwriters were writing from an incredibly personal view for characters in musicals,” she says during a Zoom interview in mid-September, “and when singer-songwriters started to emerge out of the ‘60s, because of what was happening politically and with the war, I think you have this same feeling of people writing from a very personal point of view. It was confirmation to her that her new album, Rita Wilson Now & Forever: Duets, would hit a sweet spot, not just with her peers, but with younger generations raised on these 50-year-old pop classics by their parents. Jake Owen Floats a Revised Version of Willie Nelson's 'On the Road Again': 'You Never Want to… ![]()
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