I Don't Know a Thing About Love

I Don't Know A Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard is the 73rd solo studio album by Willie Nelson, released on March 3, 2023. Produced by Buddy Cannon, the album is a tribute to the songwriter Harlan Howard.

Content

The album is a collection of ten songs performed by Nelson and originally written by Harlan Howard. Howard gave Nelson his first job as a songwriter for the publishing company Pamper Music. The album was produced by Buddy Cannon, and features cover art by Nelson's son, Micah.

The album was released on March 3, 2023, the 21st anniversary of Howard's death. On January 17, 2023, Nelson released the single "Busted".

Critical reception

I Don't Know A Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard received positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received a score of 84 out of 100 based on four reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMusic praised Nelson's voice and said that while the arrangements of Howard's songs held few surprises, this put the focus on the "ace band", resulting in a record which sounds "easy and relaxed, familiar and fresh" while No Depression concluded that "even when the songs are coming out of his mouth instead of his head, Nelson still delivers the goods like nobody's business but his own." Liz Thomson of The Arts Desk called the album "a real doozy, an album with which it's impossible not to fall in love," praising Howard's "irresistible" songs, the musicianship and Nelson's "remarkably secure" voice. Tom Dunne of The Irish Examiner listed this as one of his six favorite albums of the year so far in mid-April 2023.

Track listing

Personnel

Charts

References