“Charlie, Last Name Wilson Is One of R&B's Most Improbable Comeback Albums”

My latest for Oxford Karma is a profile on one of my all-time favorite artists, the unsinkable Charlie Wilson. Here, I reflect on Wilson’s legacy as a musical innovator and take a close look at his 2005 R&B masterpiece, Charlie, Last Name Wilson.

“This album shouldn’t work. The thing shouldn’t hang together so seamlessly. A soft-spoken, 53-year-old preacher’s son from Oklahoma, whose last hit single was released in 1982, shouldn’t still have this sort of fire in his voice. He shouldn’t be able to rebound from those strung-out years on the street with such poise, bouncing back into the pop arena as if he had never left it in the first place. This record shouldn’t be so compulsively playable, so delicious, 10 years after the fact.”

[Read the full article at Oxford Karma.]