God's Problem Child
by Willie Nelson
  • Record Label: Legacy
  • Release Date: Apr 28, 2017
Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 13 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 13
  3. Negative: 0 out of 13
Buy Now
Buy on
  1. Paste Magazine
    Apr 27, 2017
    87
    Honesty gives God’s Problem Child heft.
  2. Blurt Magazine
    May 22, 2017
    80
    From start to finish, God’s Problem Child is a quintessential Willie Nelson record and there are few things in the world better than that.
  3. Magnet
    May 18, 2017
    80
    The album's greatest treasures are sadder and subtler, finding their place within the Willie trifecta of love, loss and loneliness. [No. 142, p.59]
    All this publication's reviews
  5. Q Magazine
    May 9, 2017
    80
    Eloquent, revelatory and moving. [Jul 2017, p.111]
    All this publication's reviews
  6. Record Collector
    Apr 27, 2017
    80
    As ever, it’s all played with impeccably economical style, tight-as-a-drum country shuffles with occasional jazz excursions; the work of a bona fide legend who’s never sounded more alive.
  7. PopMatters
    Apr 27, 2017
    80
    While perhaps not a definitive artistic statement, God’s Problem Child is nonetheless an indisputable high point in this late stage of Nelson’s career, one that will no doubt go down as required listening for those who would ever deign to question his continued cultural relevancy.
  8. Uncut
    Apr 27, 2017
    80
    On God’s Problem Child, he sounds a bit like a weathered harmonica: he might have lost some of his higher notes, but he can soar through all the ones that count. The arrangements, which skew more toward classic country and slower tempos than Band Of Brothers, also help highlight Willie’s strengths.
  9. AllMusic
    Apr 27, 2017
    80
    There isn't a hint of fussiness and the songs and the performances are so understated, they only seem richer with repeated spins.
  10. Rolling Stone
    Apr 27, 2017
    80
    God's Problem Child is a tightly-woven, poignant collection of ruminations on aging and fading faculties that amounts to Nelson's most moving album in decades.
  11. Pitchfork
    May 1, 2017
    76
    At times, Nelson’s nonchalance makes some of the more topical concerns on God’s Problem Child feel a tad hackneyed. ... That leaves plenty of space for the other veteran songwriters to slip Nelson their own meditations on aging.
  12. Exclaim
    May 9, 2017
    70
    These songs don't contain the spine-tingling embrace of death that fuelled Leonard Cohen and David Bowie's final albums, but Nelson faces his realities head on here, with grit and a grin.
  13. Austin Chronicle
    May 17, 2017
    67
    The final third of the disc hits a tempo rut, though some such selections are ripe for rearrangement and reinterpretation.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.6

Generally favorable reviews- based on 7 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 7
  3. Negative: 1 out of 7
  1. amucomm
    Jan 4, 2018
    9
    Willie Nelson - GOD'S PROBLEM CHILD

    Another octogenarian that is "Still Not Dead" but heartily is joking about the fact, is Austinite    Willie Nelson - GOD'S PROBLEM CHILD

    Another octogenarian that is "Still Not Dead" but heartily is joking about the fact, is Austinite Willie Nelson who with "GOD'S PROBLEM CHILD" released his best album in almost two decades, not counting his collaboration albums with Ray Price, Kimmie Rhodes, and Wynton Marsalis.
    It's not just the title track, "God's Problem Child," a song written by Jamey Johnson and Tony Joe White, who both join Willie together with the late Leon Russell, that will lure you in. There's a tribute by Gary Nicholson for the late Merle Haggard "He Won't Ever Be Gone," the metaphor of a "Butterfly" (Sonny Throckmorton and Mark Sherrill), the reflective, outstanding "Old Timer" by "Funky" Donnie Fritts and Lenny LeBlanc as well as seven songs Willie wrote with his producer Buddy Cannon, "Lady Luck" will you take waltzing, but it's two of the slower songs that will catch your attention, the superb, instant classic, hard-to-get-over-a-lost-love "Your Memory Has A Mind Of Its Own," a brilliant reworking of "Love Has A Mind Of Its Own" and the sorrowful adaptation of getting old, "It Gets Easier."
    It gets easier to say "some other time"
    It gets easier to tell the world to wait
    And it gets easier to watch the world fly by
    And tell it, "I will catch up, but not today"    … Full Review »
See all user reviews »