Cody Johnson & Willie Nelson Reimagine ‘Sad Songs and Waltzes'

The last time Cody Johnson was on Radio Texas, LIVE!, he had just been nominated for CMA New Artist of the Year, his music had just collectively surpassed 1 billion streams, he was in the middle of touring with Miranda Lambert, and talking about releasing a collections of songs that had all been written pre-2000.

If you hadn't heard, toward the end of 2019 the CoJo team launched their "The Great 20th Century Cody Johnson Song Search." Cody was actively looking to find songs for his next album that had been written in the '90s.

"We specifically asked for songs that were written pre-2000," Johnson told us. "I wanted stuff that other artist wouldn't cut because [they thought] it couldn't work on country radio... There are a million songwriters I could name right now that stopped getting hits after the '80s and '90s because they couldn't adapt to [writing the new] type of country music."

But of course just a few weeks after our sit-down the world came to grinding halt, thanks to that damn worldwide pandemic.

During our talk, Cody did reveal that he had cut a duet with the legendary Willie Nelson, at the time he stopped short of telling us which song it was: "One of the ones I've already got done [for the next record] is with Willie Nelson, with my band. It's a very old obscure that was special to me... I got to sit down with Willie and tell him the story why I cut this song."

Well today, we finally get ears on the long-awaited duet. Cody has teamed up with Willie to duet on “Sad Songs And Waltzes.” The song was off Willie’s 1973 Shotgun Willie album, and Keith Whitley later recorded it for his 1982 album of the same name.

Turns out Cody has been very busy during his "time off". His new album, officially titled Human: The Double Album, will be out in October, his long-awaited documentary, Dear Rodeo: The Cody Johnson Story will be released in August, and he’s got a Christmas album coming out this year too.