bonnie ‘prince’ billy

Thirty years ago this month, Will Oldham released his third full-length album, Viva Last Blues, under the moniker Palace Music. Oldham proved that a DIY aesthetic could be married with American folk traditions to create something new and profound. The album’s lasting impact is not about its specific sound but about its radical artistic ethos: a record doesn’t need to be pristine to be a timeless masterpiece.

Back in 2019, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, the moniker of Will Oldham, released I Made a Place, a significant release at the time, being his first collection of new, original songs since 2011’s Wolfroy Goes to Town. One of the album’s videos, “In Good Faith,” was created by Timothy Morton, using footage from his documentary on contemporary Sacred Harp singing practices. Watch it here.

For all its apparent familiarity, The Purple Bird is a country record that nobody else could have possibly made. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is still doing things entirely his own way, and he sounds as good as ever. Long may it continue.

Taken from his forthcoming new album ‘The Purple Bird’, Bonnie “Prince” Billy shares his latest single, Downstream, an eco-ballad co-written with and featuring Nashville legend John Anderson.

Watch Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s new video ‘London May’, named after, and featuring, the musician/actor. Directed by Sai Selvarajan it starts off moody and dark and gives way to a hopeful optimism.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy announces his new studio album ‘The Purple Bird’, made in Nashville with producer David “Ferg” Ferguson and an ensemble of A-list session musicians. Watch the video for their lead single ‘Our Home’, featuring Tim O’Brien.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Nathan Salsburg, and Tyler Trotter transform “Hear The Children Sing” and “The Evidence,” two songs by Baltimore punk/post-hardcore band Lungfish, into enchanting and beautiful meditations.

In 2005 a film was made of the Green Man Festival in Wales. It has been unreleased and unseen for nearly 20 years and features performances by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Alasdair Roberts and Joanna Newsom, among others.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy shares the video/single “Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You”, the title track of his latest album that doesn’t appear on the album…instead it stands marvellously on its own. Watch the accompanying video directed by Adam Laity.

Directed by Jacob Forman, watch the video for Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s “Willow, Pine and Oak” – “When first proposing the video to me, Will posed it as a challenge of sorts— to stray from my typical home of the handheld camera and attempt to capture that same sort of intimacy with a tripod. To ‘lock it down,’ in his words…”

While ‘Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You’ is recognisably a Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album, it is also a slight departure. These songs have a life-affirming quality, a willingness to exist in the present, and as a result, this is one of Will Oldham’s most rewarding albums.

Taken from his forthcoming new album ‘Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You’, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy shares his new single ‘Crazy Blue Bells’, for which Director Ray Tintori presents a dazzling visual accompaniment.