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Crazy (Willie Nelson song)

"Crazy"
Single by Patsy Cline
from the album Showcase With the Jordanaires
A-side "Crazy"
B-side "Who Can I Count On?"
Released October 16, 1961
Format 45 rpm, 12-inch 45 maxi, 33 rpm, cassette single, download
Recorded August 21, 1961
Genre Country, traditional pop
Length 2:41
Label Decca
Writer(s) Willie Nelson
Producer(s) Owen Bradley
Patsy Cline singles chronology
"I Fall to Pieces" "Crazy" "She's Got You"
"Crazy"
Leanncrazysingle.jpg
Single by LeAnn Rimes
from the album LeAnn Rimes
Released December 28, 1999
Format CD single, digital download
Recorded 1998
Genre Country
Label Curb
Writer(s) Willie Nelson
Producer(s) Wilbur C. Rimes
LeAnn Rimes singles chronology
"Cattle Call"
(1999)
"Crazy"
(1999)
"I Need You"
2000

"Crazy" is a ballad composed by Willie Nelson. It has been recorded by several artists, most notably by Patsy Cline, whose version was a No. 2 country hit in 1962.

Partly due to the genre-blending nature of the song, it has been covered by dozens of artists in several genres over the years; nevertheless, the song remains inextricably linked with Cline. Nelson's own version appears on his 1962 debut album ...And Then I Wrote.

With some help from a friend named Oliver English, Nelson wrote the song in early 1961; at the time he was a journeyman singer-songwriter who had written several hits for other artists but had not yet had a significant recording of his own. Nelson originally wrote the song for country singer Billy Walker who turned it down for the same reason Roy Drusky turned down "I Fall to Pieces" the previous year - that it was "a girl's song". The song's eventual success helped launch Nelson as a performer as well as a songwriter.

Musically the song is a jazz-pop ballad with country overtones and a complex melody. The lyrics describe the singer's state of bemusement at the singer's own helpless love for the object of his affection.

Patsy Cline was already a country music superstar and looking for material to extend a string of hits. She picked it as a follow-up to her previous big hit "I Fall to Pieces". "Crazy", its complex melody suiting Cline's vocal talent perfectly, was released in late 1961, immediately became another huge hit for Cline and widened the crossover audience she had established with her prior hits. It spent 21 weeks on the chart and eventually became one of her signature tunes. Cline's version is No. 85 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

According to the Ellis Nassour biography Patsy Cline, Nelson, who at that time was known as a struggling songwriter by the name of Hugh Nelson, was a regular at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge on Nashville's Music Row, where he frequented with friends Kris Kristofferson and Roger Miller, both unknown songwriters at that time. Nelson met Cline's husband, Charlie Dick, at the bar one evening and pitched the song to him. Dick took the track home and played it for Cline, who absolutely hated it at first because Nelson's demo "spoke" the lyrics ahead of and behind the beat, about which an annoyed Cline remarked that she "couldn't sing like that".


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