New album: Mavis Staples sings about the “Sad and Beautiful World”

Bob Dylan kissed her back then, at the Newport Festival in 1963, and asked her to marry him. And years later, Mavis Staples told the New York Times, she hid from him at a concert at the Apollo in Harlem, afraid he might ask her again. The world needs Dylan, who released his last album in 2020, so she wants to call him and tell him, "Don't pull away, Bobby!" She herself wanted to do the same in 2023.

And then it moves again. “My voice is my gift from God,” she said in the interview. “If I don’t use it, I’m abusing my gift.” Listening to the once mighty alto of the 86-year-old, it has become gentler, softer, but can still unleash a dark storm front when she opens her album “Sad and Beautiful World” with “Chicago”—Tom Waits’ song about her hometown, the “windy city,” currently besieged by the governmental fury of President Donald Trump.

In this blues song about rural exodus, the central line takes on a second, contemporary meaning: "Maybe everything will be better in Chicago." And in Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings' ballad "Hard Times," the "mean old world is in dire straits," but one shouldn't let the crises get the better of them. Resilience, baby!

Mavis Staples is a legend, on stage for more than 75 years. She sang at the age of ten with the family band Staples Singers, who experienced racism in the Jim Crow South, and who became the most famous gospel band in the USA, performing with humanism and faith in God for the rights of Black Americans.

Staples has released solo albums since 1969 and collaborated with artists including Ry Cooder, Prince, the Gorillaz, Hozier, and Jeff Tweedy. The Wilco boss was in awe of her; their first encounter was "like meeting a dollar bill or a bald eagle."

“Sad…” consists of cover versions. Alternative rock producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Iron & Wine) has woven gospel, soul, and Americana into a sound that is embracing, even though the forces that threaten freedom are not denied.

“Beautiful Stranger” is a country gem by the great Kevin Morby, in the spirit of Martin Luther King: “And when the gunmen come, I am full of love.” Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” tells of the “murderers in high office” who “recite their prayers,” of the “lawless mob,” and the “captive dove of peace.” The hope: “Everything has a crack,” and so “light will shine in.”

Mavis Staples has always been a positive thinker – her mother called her "Bubbles". Hozier and Allison Russell wrote "Human Mind" about a dehumanized present, but: "I deal with love (...) and I don't give up".

And so this is also an album about clinging to goodness and faith. "Godspeed" by R&B singer Frank Ocean is a farewell for perilous journeys. She sings the mantra "We gotta have Peace" by her friend Curtis Mayfield, who died in 1999. Everyone should work for peace and freedom. Dylan, too.

Did she call him? Rumor has it he's also working on a new album.

Mavis Staples – “Sad And Beautiful World” (Anti) – was released on November 7th.