Man Without A Soul

Album: Good Souls Better Angels (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • Lucinda Williams' husband/manager, Tom Overby, came up with the idea for this crushing swipe at Donald Trump. Though Williams doesn't specifically name the sandy-haired US president, she worries that the song's subject is too easily identifiable. "I don't want to say that it's exactly about that person because I like to leave it open to interpretation," she told UK's The Sun newspaper.

    "The other day Tom said, 'Don't tell people that song is about Trump' and I said, 'I'm not telling them, they're telling me.' It's pretty obvious. We're all feeling angry and frustrated, so it had to come out somewhere."
  • This was the song on Good Souls Better Angels that Williams and Overby spent the most time fine tuning. "I actually said to Tom, 'Honey, everybody has a soul. Even though it's Donald Trump, I don't want to say he doesn't have a soul,'" Williams told American Songwriter. "To me that was the worst thing you could say about someone. Remember Neil Young sang, 'Even Richard Nixon has got soul.'"
  • Lucinda Williams married Tom Overby, an executive from Best Buy's music department, in September 2009. Good Souls Better Angels finds Overby contributing lyrics for the first time on one of his wife's records. "This is a new thing we've been doing," Williams told Uncut magazine. "It's giving me some new impetus. We've been working on a few things together, kind of like what Tom Waits is doing with his wife, Kathleen Brennan."

Comments: 1

  • Loren from Florence, AzJust listened to this song and thought it exclusively described Joe Biden.
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