4.8 • 833 Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
In addition to being one the few artists to earn an EGOT—i.e. win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony—Whoopi Goldberg also happens to be a big-time music nerd and monster Willie fan. On this episode she talks about his 1978 recording of “Stardust,” calling it “a love song to a love song” that, when Willie sings it, makes her feel like she’s floating barefoot in the clouds with her late mom and brother. From there she’ll describe growing up a musical omnivore in NYC (see Waylon and Willie...but also Anthony Newley, Glen Campbell, and the Four Tops), the origins of country music, and the night she shared a stage with Willie, Leon Russell, and Ray Charles.
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0:00.0 | Texas Monthly. |
0:11.0 | Hey there, I'm John Spong with Texas Monthly magazine, and this is One by Willie, |
0:16.2 | a podcast in which I talk each week to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie |
0:21.3 | Willie song that they really love. This week, we visit with the incomparable Whoopi |
0:25.7 | Goldberg, who in addition to being one of the few people who's won an Oscar, a Tony, an Emmy, |
0:30.7 | and a Grammy is also a best-selling author and a monster Willie Nelson fan. She's going to focus on his 1978 recording of Stardust, |
0:40.5 | explaining how on the one hand it's what she calls a love song about a love song, but also why, |
0:46.4 | when she hears Willie sing it, she pictures herself barefoot in the clouds with her late mom and brother. |
0:52.2 | From there she'll get into Wayland, the Four Tops, an English |
0:55.6 | song and dance man Anthony Newley. The ways that Willie's work with farm aid is akin to the |
1:00.6 | comic relief benefits she used to host with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams. And then finally, |
1:05.9 | she's going to issue a dinner invite to Willie and his wife Annie, who Whoopi describes as an American standard, |
1:12.6 | just like Stardust. |
1:14.3 | Oh, and Willie and Annie, if y'all are listening, Whoopi means it. |
1:18.1 | So let's do it. |
1:20.5 | It's our. Sometimes I wonder. |
1:36.3 | You know, we start every show at the same place, |
1:39.3 | and that is what's so cool about Stardust, either just the song Stardust or Willie's version |
1:48.3 | of Stardust? |
1:49.3 | Well, Willie's version of Stardust will stop you in your tracks and insist that you hear |
1:59.5 | the words. And I like that. I like songs that insist that you hear the words. And I like that. |
2:01.6 | I like songs that insist that I listen. |
... |
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