Willie Nelson Makes Great Songwriting Look as Easy as Breathing

Willie Nelson, now 90, has been writing songs for nearly a century. He wrote his first song when he was 7 years old. Given his energetic album output of late, he probably wrote his most recent song this morning.

Over the course of a very long and eventful musical career that produced at least 100 studio albums and 14 live albums, Willie has also found the time to write two engaging autobiographies and another dozen or so books filled with stories mostly about his childhood and his extended musical family. (Going with "Willie" not out of presumption but because the ultimate test of true celebrity is when you're universally recognized by one name, like Dolly, or Elvis, or Popeye.)

But now he’s published his real autobiography, Energy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs, in which (with the help of ghostwriter David Ritts and Willie's longtime harmonica wingman Mickey Raphael) he recounts the circumstances, both musical and personal, that inspired 160 of his best-known songs.

Read more at The Daily Beast.