![]() It goes from a conversation to an anguished cry. It’s become a song that Harry ‘owns.’ That’s what one hopes for, that you can own a song the way he did. Pete Ham and Tom Evans from that band wrote it. ![]() “Everybody associates that song with Harry Nilsson as the writer, but it was actually a Badfinger song. I remember watching them on TV and thinking, ‘Who are these kids singing? How do you get to be a kid and sing?’ I knew they were Motown and a family, but, to me, that was just extraordinary, to see this family of these young kids singing.” The Jackson 5 were such a huge part of my growing up. I said, ‘Is there anything that you love from the ’70s that you’d want to sing?’ He said, ‘I’ll Be There.’ My jaw dropped. “During the pandemic, I hadn’t met Jimmie, but he called me up, and he asked me to sing on his song ‘When This Is Over,’ from the Bettie James album. Then they’re off with, ‘Ah, now we’re together.’ There’s something very beautiful about that.” All of a sudden, this is what I get out of it, these two people who are singing about each other separately then come together in this beautiful way where their voices intertwine. I love, particularly, when our voices wrap around each other one by one, that section. When a man sings lyrics that intimate, you can’t help but melt. He can remember any song from any era, from any genre. “First of all, Tim has an encyclopedic knowledge of music. Who can say that? But this is a man who loves what he does, and all that love comes through.” When he goes into his falsetto, you just feel like, ‘What is going on here?’ I mean, there’s an aching to him and a longing that he connects to when he’s singing ‘Where Is the Love?’ as if he’s really searching for it. It just comes out, and he has this range. “When Smokey sings-I would call it a velvet voice. I felt like he was really saying those words to me.” Because he’s such an incredible musician himself, I think his voice is also his instrument, and he uses it that way. Keith, I just thought he brought such soul. Maybe she’s working somewhere, and when she comes home, she wants that loving.’ It was empowering to be a woman singing that and being that open about your own desires. When a woman sings it, it’s a very modern, forward-thinking take on it-that a woman would have needs, and that a woman would go out of town. “When I was looking at the lyrics, I thought, ‘Oh, this was written by a man to sing to a woman in the ’70s.’ I thought, ‘Gosh. Below, Wilson shares insight into several key tracks on Now & Forever: Duets. And up-and-comer Jimmie Allen injects a lighthearted joy into the Jackson 5 classic “I’ll Be There,” which Wilson cites as a defining song in her personal musical canon. Wilson tapped Nelson for Paul Simon’s “Slip Slidin’ Away,” which takes on new gravity as a duet. Urban joins Wilson in a warmhearted take on Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” Urban’s soulful croon and bluesy guitar licks playing well off Wilson’s honeyed vocal. “When I started thinking about the music that way, I thought, ‘What if the interpretation of these songs was now a duet, a conversation between two lovers, two people, so that it was a new way of listening and interpreting? How are these songs listened to if you’re listening to them as conversations?’” That thought experiment produced Now & Forever: Duets, a collaborative album of ’70s love songs featuring duets between Wilson and Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson, Keith Urban, and more.įollowing Wilson’s 2019 album, Halfway to Home, Now & Forever mines the actor and musician’s musical DNA, compiling 10 tracks that helped inform her artistry and her deep love of music. “For me, the ’70s represents the emergence of the singer-songwriter, in writing from a first-person point of view,” Rita Wilson tells Apple Music.
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