Since he made his debut in 1962, very rarely has a year gone by without the release of at least one Wille Nelson record. On his 70th solo LP, the 87-year-old singer-songwriter continues to reflect without showing any signs of slowing down. Bolstered by two new originals he wrote with long-time friend and producer Buddy Cannon (“Blue Star”, “Love Just Laughed”), First Rose of Spring is a powerful comment on the passage of time that would feel like a valediction were it coming from anybody else. The title track tells the story of a husband and wife, of “a love affair from the beginning to the end”, Nelson tells Apple Music. “It’s one of the best songs I’ve heard in a long time.” On “Stealing Home”, he sings from the perspective of a kid overwhelmed by memories as they help pack up their family home. Elsewhere, he galvanises the Chris Stapleton-penned “Our Song” and adds gravitas to Toby Keith’s Clint Eastwood-inspired ballad “Don’t Let the Old Man In”—and even takes a crack at the orchestral lament “Yesterday When I Was Young”, made famous in the US by Roy Clark in 1969 but originally written and released as “Hier encore” by French icon Charles Aznavour five years earlier. “There's a lot of good songs that we still have that will be on the next album or the next one,” Nelson says. “Over the years, we've built quite a backlog. Whether you record them today, tomorrow, last year, it don't matter—a good song will always be a good song.”