Jimmy Webb to Celebrate His 80th Birthday With Career-Spanning ‘Found Songs’ Album: ‘I’m Always 18 on the Inside’
Categoria: Musica
The legendary songwriter ("MacArthur Park," "Wichita Lineman") is prepping Yours For the Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb.
Por Billboard | 14/08/2026
A songwriter as prolific, long-lived and legendary as Jimmy Webb is bound to have left a few things behind over the decades. So it’s fitting that the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s third-youngest inductee ever is celebrating his 80th birthday on Saturday (Aug. 15) by announcing a new album, Yours For the Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb , due out Oct. 16 on Sun Records. A taste, the original demo of “Winter Clothes” that Webb pitched to Frank Sinatra, is out Friday (Aug. 14). As the title indicates, “it’s pretty much overlooked or unrecorded, neglected in a way, music that my wife [album executive producer Laura Savini Webb] and some of the younger people around me really inspired me to go back and finish,” Webb — who wrote the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits “MacArthur Park,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston” and “Up, Up and Away,” among many other classics — tells Billboard via Zoom from Long Island. “And my children say, ‘Y’know, dad, you wrote this. This is great. This could’ve been a hit.’ So the basis of this album is rebirth, recycling that youthful energy and not letting (the songs) just molder away in the attic but to go back and flip those pancakes again and see what we can come up with. It’s very invigorating. Very inspiring…. Just ’cause I’m 80 doesn’t mean I’ve lost that fire, y’know? I may be 80 on the outside, but I’m always 18 on the inside.” The three-time Grammy winner says “Winter Clothes” — which is presented on the album via the demo as well as a “polished up” new recording with Graham Nash guesting — dates back to the early ‘70s, and was written with Sinatra in mind. “Mr. Sinatra thought he might record it, but he thought I needed to work on it,” says Webb, who still refers to Ol’ Blue Eyes formally “because he might be listening.” “When Mr. Sinatra says, ‘Y’know, kid, this is pretty good, but I think it needs some work,’ you listen to him. He was telling me some really important stuff. I never really took that song back to him, but I never gave up on the idea. I thought it was a pretty good song, so when we decided to do this (album), it felt like it was time to bring it back out.” That’s pretty much the case for all 13 tracks on Yours For the Taking , which was produced by Webb’s longtime collaborator Fred Mollin and recorded in Nashville, New York and Los Angeles. He wrote “If I Ever Get to Talk to You Again” — another song presented in its original demo form and in a new version featuring Beth Nielsen Chapman — after seeing Joni Mitchell perform at the Troubadour in Los Angeles during the early ‘70s. “Almost Alright Again” and “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” were shopped around Nashvil