25 Country Albums You Need to Hear (Even If You Hate Country Music)

5. RED HEADED STRANGER
Willie Nelson
In the mid-'70s, when the Who had triumphed with Tommy and Quadrophenia and every prog-rock band worth their salt was coming out with a narrative song cycle, the last place most music fans looked for a concept album was country music. (Johnny Cash and Bobby Braddock had done some great ones in the '60s, but to little fanfare.) So Willie's 1975 breakthrough album was a particular surprise, as it told the story of a traveling preacher in the Old West through a series of songs that stood fine on their own. The album single-handedly moved the nexus of country music just a few inches away from Nashville, toward Austin, Texas — and besides cementing Nelson's transition from Music Row tunesmith to laconic, long-haired counterculture hero, it also gave him one of his first pop crossover hits, in ''Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.''