Lucinda Williams. Photo: Mark Seliger
(Highway 20 Records)
When it comes to politically charged protest songs, Lucinda Williams is hitting a late-career high. Over 15 albums (and three Grammy wins), the high priestess of Americana has run the gamut of well-trodden country and blues motifs such as unrequited love, longing, loss and regret. She’s depicted the American South she grew up in with stinging social commentary and explored tough themes such as abusive relationships. But after the hellish news cycle of recent years, the 72-year-old’s work has gradually become more topical – and it’s all the better for it.
The year 2020 was a turning point. Williams’s song Man Without A Soul, from that year’s Good Souls Better Angels, was a moral indictment of “a man without shame”. When she posted an article about Donald Trump with a similar title on her Facebook page in April of that year, she faced a backlash from some fans, who said they’d no longer listen to her music. Though at the time she’d never explicitly said the song was about Trump, Williams doubled down. Weeks later, she called him “the worst president we’ve ever had in the history of the United States”. She’d had blowback before – such as when she started performing Bob Dylan’s Masters of War after 9/11 – and this was hardly a Dixie Chicks-sized furore. But clearly, she was not going to stop speaking her mind.
A turbulent personal time swiftly followed: during the pandemic, Williams lost close friends including her collaborator and producer Hal Willner, and the country-folk great John Prine. Then a tornado ripped through her newly adopted hometown of Nashville and tore the roof off her house. To top it all, in November 2020, a stroke resulted in her being unable to play guitar. Williams soldiered on, putting out another studio album, 2023’s Stories From A Rock n Roll Heart, musing on her “lost youth” and those she’s also lost – her voice now with the husk of someone who grew up in a tobacco factory. That same year, she brought out a well-received memoir. For her 15th record, however, she returns to the present day, addressing the moral collapse of the country she calls home.
On the brooding standout Punchline, she surveys a nation divided with the fatigued tone of ‘I told you so’
World’s Gone Wrong – a reference to Dylan, one of her foremost influences – has been called a “raging indictment of Trump’s America”, though in truth it feels more world-weary than lacerating. On the brooding standout Punchline, she surveys a nation divided with the fatigued tone of “I told you so”. These aren’t specific takedowns but protest prayers/solemn hymnals for a broken US of A. The optimistic title track tilts the lens towards everyday people just trying to get by – “He sells cars and she’s a nurse … it’s getting harder to make ends meet” – and offers the “comfort of a song”.
Written largely with her husband and collaborator Tom Overby and guitarist Doug Pettibone during spring 2025, as the president entered his second term, the album is as much about how history will always “come back around” (a lyric from Freedom Speaks). Indeed, there are echoes of the 60s spirit and legacy of Black resistance throughout World’s Gone Wrong, whether it’s the Hammond organ wibble on that aforementioned track or the bluesy bop of her Trump-themed follow-up, How Much Did You Get for Your Soul. Williams channels the protest songs of the period she grew up in, as a student reading Malcolm X biographies and attending anti-war demonstrations, as well as perhaps the “jukebox” covers albums she’s been releasing of late, spanning Muscle Shoals, Rolling Stones and country classics. But there’s respite on Low Life, with its highballs and hurricanes at the juke joint (for a buck 25, sign me up!). She’s great at referencing alt-country’s new wave, having previously covered Sharon Van Etten and worked with the likes of Angel Olsen and Margo Price, and this track is co-written with the stratospheric indie-folk band Big Thief.
Continuing the star-studded collaborations, Williams enlists civil rights activist and gospel legend Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers for a syrupy, slinky, sub-aqueous cover of Bob Marley’s So Much Trouble In The World (I could have listened to an entire album of their duets). With its line “You see men sailing on their ego trips / Blast off on their spaceships”, the track feels uncannily timely in an era of Elon Musk and tech-bro homogeneity (pleasingly, you won’t find this album on Spotify either). And while they might not have Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa singing backup this time as they did on Stories…, Williams and co continue to spotlight the next generation here instead – namely, the next big thing in country, Brittney Spencer, whose Nashville sass and impressive vocal runs are the sonic counterbalance to Williams’s Louisiana rasp.
The final guest appearance comes courtesy of American singer-songwriter Norah Jones on the sombre country closer We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around. Its title and biblical imagery suggest that the end is nigh – “We have stared into the eyes of evil / We have slow-danced with the devil” – and yet it turns into an impassioned plea between the singers to keep on trucking and fighting the good fight. The world may have gone wrong – but Lucinda Williams has got its measure just right.
World’s Gone Wrong is out now via Highway 20 Records. Lucinda Williams tours the UK from 26 January
Kate Hutchinson is the Nerve's music critic. A writer and broadcaster, she’s behind the audio series The Last Bohemians, and the 2025 music podcast Studio Radicals, which Radio Times called "podcasting at its best". Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, the Guardian, The Wire, Monocle and more, and she currently presents a fortnightly show on Soho Radio.