Transportation
On the Road Again: Mapping All the Cities in Willie Nelson's Songs
He thought Nashville was the roughest, but Willie plays all sorts of songs about place.
"City of New Orleans" isn't a song about New Orleans. It's a song about a train called the City of New Orleans. Willie Nelson didn't write it. But he made it a Grammy Award-winning hit in 1984.
Looking back, it's easy to see how Willie Nelson came to it. Over the course of his career—a five-decade ramblin' run that spans recordings as far back as 1962 and as recent as last year—Willie has written endlessly about his affection for (and occasional vexation with) cities across the land.