Album Notes

Here's what people are saying about Willie Nile's Beautiful Wreck Of The World.

"A Classic" - Bono

"A Great Album" - Lou Reed

"Willie's so good I can't believe he's not from New Jersey" - Little Steven

"Top Ten Album Of The Year" - Billboard

"On The Road To Calvary For Jeff Buckley)Is One Of The Most Beautiful Songs I Have Ever Heard" - Lucinda Williams

Bio

In the early 1980's, Willie Nile was just one of the thousands of young troubadours playing the tiny clubs of New York's Greenwich Village when New York Times' critic Robert Palmer accidentally stumbled upon a Willie Nile performance. The next day, the Times review called him "an exceptional talent," and "the most gifted songwriter to emerge from the New York scene in some time."

The Times article soon led to a deal with Arista records, where Nile recorded two critically acclaimed albums, "Willie Nile" and "Golden Down." More rave reviews compared the singer to Bob Dylan and Buddy Holly, and called him "a one-man Clash." The excitement surrounding the first album prompted Pete Townshend to request Willie's presence on the Who's summer tour. Nile and his band were soon on the road with The Who, only a few months after Willie's first experience playing with a band.

Nile later released the album "Places I Have Never Been" on Columbia, with the hits "Everybody Needs a Hammer" and "Heaven Help The Lonely," and was followed by the EP, "Hard Times In America."

Over the years, the Buffalo, New York-born singer has recorded and performed with the likes of Richard Thompson, Lucinda Williams, Ringo Starr, The Pretenders, Roger McGuinn and Elvis Costello. In the fall of '03, he was invited to share the stage at three concerts with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, including the two final historic Shea Stadium shows. From Shea to the clubs and concert halls of Europe, Willie's live performances are legendary.

In 1998, Willie was one of the featured vocalists on the all-star ensemble album "Largo," along with Joan Osborne, Cyndi Lauper, Levon Helm, The Chieftans, Taj Mahal and Carole King.

The most recent Nile album, "Beautiful Wreck Of The World," was chosen as one of the Top Ten Albums of the Year by critics at Billboard Magazine, The Village Voice and Stereo Review. Lucinda Williams called "On The Road To Calvary," Willie's song for Jeff Buckley, "One of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard." The album reached the finals of the Independent Music Awards for Best Rock Album of the Year.

"Beautiful Wreck Of The World" marked the beginning of a new chapter in the career of one of America's great singer-songwriters. Willie has just finished work on the follow-up, STREETS OF NEW YORK, a recording that is already being hailed as Nile's masterpiece. It will be released worldwide on January 31, 2006.

Former Time Magazine music critic and Academy Award winning screenwriter Jay Cocks writes of the new album, "The tunes he writes and plays with such blowtorch vibrancy get the myth and magic and danger and sadness and love in this town--of this town--truer, and righter, than anything I've heard since Dion. This record is a head-twister and heart-wrencher. It's rock and roll at its best. It's New York at its best. And there's nothing better than that."