Art can and often does feel different to the artist than to the audience, and the Rodney Crowell song that Willie Nelson once dubbed “one of the greatest country songs” is no small exception. The latter country icon sang the 1975 track’s praises in a 2025 interview with Forbes, placing it among the same ranks as George Jones classics, often considered the pinnacle of country songwriting.
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But for Crowell, the song Nelson enjoys so much has creative choices that the “After All This Time” singer considers “glaring” mistakes. It goes to show that no one critiques art quite like the artist who made it in the first place.
Willie Nelson Said This Rodney Crowell Song Was One Of the Best
When you’ve realized as many albums as Willie Nelson has, it can help to call upon others’ songwriting to keep things fresh and exciting for both the listener and the performer. So, when the time came for Nelson to release his 77th solo studio album in April 2025, he settled on making a record entirely of covers by Rodney Crowell. Speaking to Forbes two months later, Nelson said one song was the driving impetus for Nelson’s idea: “Til I Gain Control Again.”
The “Red Headed Stranger” called the track, which Crowell wrote in 1975, “one of the greatest country songs ever written. [Rodney’s] a great writer. He doesn’t write bad songs. The other greatest song country-wise is George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Those are, in my opinion, the two greatest country songs. And Rodney is a great writer.” Nelson added, “It’s nice being able to do things with old friends. Like they say, they don’t make old friends.”
Nelson released his third rendition of “Til I Gain Control Again” on his 2025 album, Oh What a Beautiful World. The “Crazy” songwriter had previously recorded a version of the song during a live album performance for the 1978 record, Willie and Family Live, as well as his 1983 duet album with Waylon Jennings, Take It to the Limit.
The Songwriter Might Not Agree With His Colleague’s High Praise
Willie Nelson might consider “Til I Gain Control Again” to be one of the greatest country songs of all time. But that doesn’t mean the original songwriter necessarily agrees. In every new rendition of the song, whether it was the original recording artist, Emmylou Harris, Crystal Gayle, or Willie Nelson, songwriter Rodney Crowell can’t help but zoom in on one creative mistake he regrets to this day.
Speaking to American Songwriter in 2013, Crowell said, “I was playing and singing that song onstage not long ago, and I sang, What you’ve seen is what I’ve been. There is nothing I could hide from you. You see me better than I can. I was thinking, ‘Wow, that doesn’t really rhyme. Can doesn’t rhyme with been.’ I would struggle with that now. That would glare at me like crazy, and I’d spend a lot of time trying to find the hard rhyme. Yet, a lot of people tell me that’s [their] favorite song of mine.”
And indeed, Nelson is among them. Near rhyme regret aside, with praise like that, it’s hard to discredit a song too much for having a rhyme that, to Crowell’s credit, doesn’t sound that far off if you’re singing with a Southern twang.
Photo by Anre Csillag/Shutterstock
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