I've Always Been Crazy
Waylon Jennings
"I've Always Been Crazy" is Waylon Jennings performing an audit of his own legend and finding it both true and exhausting. The arrangement is spare by outlaw standards — a loping mid-tempo groove, that phased Telecaster tone kept low in the mix, a bassline that lopes along like a man walking off a hangover — leaving unusual room around the vocal. And the vocal is the event: Jennings sings low in his register, almost muttering, the phrasing loose and behind the beat, so the confession sounds offhand rather than dramatic. The lyric's central line is a survival thesis, that the craziness is precisely what has kept him from losing his mind, and he delivers it without triumph. By 1978 the cocaine years were well underway, the outlaw brand had hardened into a costume that other artists were renting, and Jennings sounds tired of being the poster. There's real ambivalence here about the freedom he fought RCA to win. He isn't renouncing it; he's noting the bill. The album it titles was the first in country history to ship gold, which only sharpens the irony of a man singing about the cost of the thing that made him rich. Put it on late, alone, when you're taking honest inventory of choices you would probably make again anyway.
medium
1970s
spare, loose
American South, Texas outlaw country
Country, Outlaw country. Outlaw country. Weary, Reflective. Offhand confession settling into a tired, unglamorous self-audit. energy 5. medium. danceability 5. valence 4. vocals: low, muttering, loose phrasing behind the beat. production: phased Telecaster kept low in mix, loping hungover bassline. texture: spare, loose. acousticness 3. era: 1970s. American South, Texas outlaw country. Late, alone, taking honest inventory of choices you'd make again anyway