Considering Jason Isbell’s Best Songs

Most artists are lucky to grace the Ryman stage once, let alone make it a second home, and Jason Isbell has essentially done just that. After selling out the Mother Church for one night in 2013, he repeated the feat for three nights in 2014 and four in 2015. He took a break in 2016, but he’ll top himself again this year with two three-night stands, Oct. 9-11 and 13-15. Isbell’s a terrific performer, and his dynamite band the 400 Unit could hold court entirely on its own. But what really keeps fans coming back again and again? It’s about the song: Isbell’s as fine a scholar of the human condition as any you’ll find in today’s music landscape, offering meditations on two of life’s greatest riddles — the genesis of love and the mystery of death — with a takeaway that lingers. To celebrate, we look at 10 standout tracks in Isbell’s catalog. 

1. “If We Were Vampires”

This cut from Isbell’s most recent LP The Nashville Sound speaks to a career spent looking for meaning among the delicate gossamer threads of existence. Along with its expressive acoustic guitar picking and wife Amanda Shires’ harmonies — delivered casually, comfortably and almost conversationally — it offers up one of the sharpest and most poignant examinations of mortality around, as he sings, “Maybe time running out is a gift.” 

2. “Cover Me Up”

“Cover Me Up” is the artist at his most personal. It’s a permanent live staple from Isbell’s 2013 breakthrough record Southeastern, and it always rouses a huge audience reaction when he sings the line, “I swore off that stuff,” about his commitment to sobriety. But what makes the song magical is how he’s able to make the minutiae of his own romance feel so universal. “Home was a dream / One I’d never seen / Till you came along,” he sings, as sparks of slide guitar flicker in. 

3. “Elephant”

Isbell tells the story of how cancer takes the life of the protagonist in Southeastern’s devastating “Elephant.” But for all the intimate, vivid detail — the booze consumed to cope, the hair lost, the past carnal urges that now must be ignored — he still makes it a song about everyone’s eventual death, the elephant in the room. It ends with a stinging couplet: “There’s one thing that’s real clear to me / No one dies with dignity.” 

4. “Dress Blues”

On his first solo project after leaving the Drive-By Truckers, the 2007 album Sirens of the Ditch, Isbell tells the story of a 21-year-old Marine captain, killed shortly before he was scheduled to come home to Alabama and witness the birth of his child. Isbell paints the what-ifs with a gentle hand, standing up to point out the cruel injustice of sending our youngest to fight “somebody’s Hollywood war.” 

5. “White Man’s World”

Isbell isn’t one to silence or even tone down his political opinions on social media or in his songs, and he’s unflinchingly honest on the Nashville Sound track “White Man’s World.” It’s a scorching, clear-eyed analysis that looks at the privilege he is afforded in a world where whiteness is the standard. “There’s no such thing as someone else’s war,” he sings, a message whose importance unfortunately continues to increase as our president fans the fires of hate. 

6. “Daisy Mae”

In “Daisy Mae” from 2011’s Here We Rest, Isbell tackles some challenging issues that are a long way from being addressed often enough. Over some fast fingerpicking, he explores the lingering ripples of sexual assault in the victim’s life. “These eyes, they remind me of a scared and simple doe before she runs,” he sings, capturing in an aching metaphor the persistent unease that remains after trauma. 

7. “Palmetto Rose”

It’s easy to talk about how Southern culture has been commodified, pointing out examples like fast-food joints’ attempts at hot chicken. It takes a lot more effort to talk about it with the keen historical context that Isbell offers in “Palmetto Rose” from 2015’s Something More Than Free. With bluesy grit, he examines what’s changed as the Civil War-era custom of women giving flowers woven from palmetto leaves to Confederate soldiers headed into battle has evolved into a staple of the tourist economy that benefits young African-Americans in Charleston, S.C. 

8. “Alabama Pines”

This track from Here We Rest shows Isbell’s keen talent for exploring the inherent danger in nostalgia. His protagonist finds himself stuck in a small town, torn between the good things he remembers and the bleak reality of the present. Everyone’s susceptible to trying to recapture the magic of times gone by — the trick, as portrayed in the song, is finding a way to leave the past behind without leaving ourselves behind, too. 

9. “If It Takes a Lifetime”

Isbell opens Something More Than Free with this jangly, rootsy number in the John Prine tradition of clever wordplay, as he sings, “My day will come / If it takes a lifetime.” The tune carries a strong traditional country flavor thanks to Shires’ fiddle work and the band’s porch-ready melodic inventions. The search for happiness and freedom is a lifelong project, and Isbell’s song looks at the results of putting in the work without dreading the finish line.

10. “Traveling Alone”

Shires’ fiddle cries at the beginning of this track from Southeastern, a beautiful ballad for everyone who joins Isbell on his journey. The lyrics “I’ve grown tired of traveling alone / Won’t you ride with me?” are aimed at Shires, but “Traveling Alone” opens his heart to family, fans and anyone who could treat it with the delicacy it deserves. And it’s an invitation for us to do the same. 

Email music@nashvillescene.com