As a songwriter and performer, Willie Nelson played a vital role in post-rock & roll country music. Although he didn't become a star until the mid-'70s, Nelson spent the 1960s writing songs that became hits for stars like Ray Price ("Night Life"), Patsy Cline ("Crazy"), Faron Young ("Hello Walls"), and Billy Walker ("Funny How Time Slips Away"), as well as releasing a series of records on Liberty and RCA that earned him a small but devoted cult following. During the early '70s, Willie abandoned Nashville for his native Texas, setting up shop with the redneck hippies in Austin and taking control of his music on the landmark Shotgun Willie and Phases & Stages. Nelson found a kindred spirit in Waylon Jennings and, together, they spearheaded the outlaw country movement that finally made him a star by 1975. Following the crossover success of that year's Red Headed Stranger and "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," Nelson became a genuine success, as recognizable in pop circles as he was to country audience; in addition to recording, he also launched an acting career in the early '80s. Even when he was a star, he never played it safe musically. Instead, he borrowed from a wide variety of styles, including traditional pop -- his biggest album was 1978's Stardust, a collection of interpretations of the Great American Songbook -- Western swing, jazz, traditional country, cowboy songs, honky tonk, rock & roll, folk, and the blues, creating a distinctive, elastic hybrid. Nelson remained at the top of the country charts until the mid-'80s, when his lifestyle -- which had always been close to the outlaw clichés with which his music flirted -- began to spiral out of control, culminating in an infamous battle with the IRS in the late '80s. Nelson's hit singles dried up by the early '90s, but he kept performing and recording at a prodigious pace, both on his own and in a variety of collaborative settings, including the country supergroup the Highwaymen. Occasionally, one of Willie's albums would garner attention from a wider audience, such as 1993's Don Was-produced Across the Borderline or 1998's Teatro, but by the 2000s, he was a beloved figure in American pop culture, embraced for his music, humor, and hippie lifestyle. Nelson wasn't one to rest on his laurels, either. During the 2010s, he struck up a fruitful collaboration with producer Buddy Cannon, who helmed a series of relaxed, mortality-minded albums over the next decade, a string that culminated in 2022's A Beautiful Time.