Without a Song, Willie Nelson's latest adventure in standards land, is a tame safari. In ten slow and sentimental ballads, Nelson circles his prey laconically, drawing a bead on love with his slow, Southern nasality but never shooting to kill. The familiar vocal hesitations and throat-catchings are all in place, but straightforward readings of these mostly less-than-spectacular tunes are tossed off by Nelson with little energy.

The basic ingredients for a good record are here — believable material and a tried-and-true team of players, including the English brothers' backbeat, Grady Martin's guitar pleasantries and guest vocalizing by heartthrob Julio Iglesias — but even these don't quite jell. Limp arrangements reminiscent of a bar mitzvah band's cursory thumping are underscored by Bee Spears' one-note-in-four bass and producer Booker T. Jones' omnipresent funeral-parlor organ. The magic that suffused "Stardust" and "Somewhere over the Rainbow" — two great cuts from previous albums — was created by mixing offbeat instruments, elements of bluegrass and swinging country, and enthusiasm. These qualities are sorely missing here. The Julio Iglesias collaboration is an almost throwaway rendering of "As Time Goes By." Even this fails to rouse Nelson from his lethargy. Don't play it again, Willie.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.