Bill Withers' Greatest Hits

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In a scant two minutes of acoustic blues reverie, Withers paints a detailed, nuanced portrait of a woman’s entire life – the quiet hardships, the tough benevolence – and how it fit into her community without ever describing anything other than her hands. A master course in poetic brevity. — J. Lynch

Like the earlier decade’s “Let It Be” or “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Withers’ signature ballad has taken on such near-hymnal significance and transcendence over the decades that it’s almost impossible to imagine it ever being a contemporary pop song. But of course it was — and an exceedingly popular one at that becoming his first (and, improbably, his only) No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard‘s R&B Songs listing in 1972. While its gentle up-and-down melody and message of unconditional support are unsurprisingly timeless — to the point where a much more playful Club Nouveau cover also topped the Hot 100 a decade and a half later — the main selling point is still Withers’ delivery, sturdy but not overpowering, helpful but not pushy. — A.U.

Incredibly, Withers almost never got a shot at recording. After receiving a deal from Sussex while laboring as a toilet-seat manufacturer, he landed in the care of Stax bandleader Booker T. Jones, who gathered most of his fellow MG members – along with Stills and Jim Keltner – to assist in Withers’ debut. Two takes from those sessions, the Grammy-winning “Ain’t No Sunshine” and devotional “Grandma’s Hands,” are included here, and showcase the vocalist’s incredible breath control, folksy drawl, and restrained phrasing. They also indicate his penchant for converting biographical experience into eminently catchy combinations of pop, gospel, blues, and soul. Lovely Day,""I Want to Spend the Night,""Hello Like Before": 1/4" / 15 IPS / Dolby A analog master to DSD 64 to analog console to lathe Use Me” came one spot away on both the Hot 100 and R&B Songs chart to matching the supremacy of “Lean On Me,” and it’s not hard to see why the song was as massive as it was — or why it was just the tiniest bit less universally accessible than “Lean.” The belching bass-and-organ saunter is irresistible, but the subject matter — about Withers’ shrugging, even smiling acceptance of an emotionally abusive but sexually fulfilling relationship — was a little real for 1972 pop radio, and the song’s greatest joys come in its negative spaces, particularly the gleefully torturous pause in between “You just keep on using me… until you use me up.”— A.U.

Taylor Swift Performs 'Safe & Sound' and 'Untouchable' Live for the First Time in Over a Decade in…Ain't No Sunshine,""Grandma's Hands": 1/4" / 15 IPS analog master to DSD 64 to analog console to lathe

Like Withers himself, his debut single, 1971’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” was a gentle masterpiece that quietly pioneered a new breed of R&B, melding sparse blues-folk rhythms with lush, soulful strings. It’s so gorgeously melancholy in its low-key wistfulness that you almost don’t realize he’s repeating the words “I know” over and over until he’s d–n near close to the 26th time. – JOE LYNCH Bill Withers’ piano line in “Lean on Me” ascends and descends, resembling hills and valleys — times of hardship and times of grace. Through it all, Withers is there offering a shoulder to lean on and asking for one in return. It’s a song that Withers says he divined from playing around on a Wurlitzer electric piano. The phrase “lean on me,” which he attributed to his West Virginia upbringing, popped into his head and he simply spun out the lyrics from there. “I think what we say is influenced by how we are, what’s been our life experiences,” he once said. “Now, I notice young guys writing about shooting each other in the city and stuff like that. Well, that was not my experience. … I think circumstance dictates what people think.” The song subsequently became his biggest hit — a Number One single that inspired the award-winning 1989 film of the same name, and that’s still covered constantly, even becoming a new sort of national anthem during the coronavirus crisis. K.G.

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Lush and brutal, “Can We Pretend” is a bright plea for the impossible. Withers asks for the couple to move forward by forgetting about past harm and hurt. “ Paint a portrait of tomorrow/ With no colors from today” is the particular poetry deployed. No less a giant than Jose Feliciano plays guitar, keeping the energy breezy, but don’t buy it — +’ Justments , from which this album comes, came in the wake of Withers’ brief marriage to activist and actress Denise Nicholas. It’s make-believe. — R.S. For two minutes, Bill Withers speaks to the audience at Carnegie Hall in his mellow, lacquered voice about the Vietnam war while his band vamps and hums. He recounts being a young man, oblivious to politics and global conflict, and then he describes meeting an injured vet — his right arm had been amputated. Suddenly Withers starts to sing: “I can’t write left-handed/ Would you please write a letter to my mother?” Booker T. called Withers “the poet Stax never had,” and it’s because of songs like this. — R.S. But by then, Withers was understandably worn down. It seems incredible in retrospect, but his record company rejected so many of his songs as unsuitable or of insufficient quality that seven years separated Watching You Watching Me from its predecessor. He made do in the interim with guest appearances on others’ albums, and if you’re in the market for another overlooked Withers classic, you could do worse than his collaboration with the Crusaders, Soul Shadows. You couldn’t really blame him for walking away – especially given that his greatest hits were the kind of greatest hits that meant their author would never have to work again. All of the selections except "Just The Two Of Us", "Soul Shadows" and "Hello Like Before" were previously released on the compilation album entitled "The Best Of Bill Withers" (JC 36877). Arguably the slinkiest groove in a career full of ’em, “Who Is He (And What Is He to You)” is an absolute master class in single-measure funk, one unsettling four-note guitar-and-bass loop that burrows its way further into your bones with each repetition. Withers matches it with a vocal that derives an entire universe of suspicion and betrayal from one passing glance from a stranger on the street —“I don’t know who he is, but I think that you do”— letting us draw our own conclusions about whether he’s really that intuitive, or just a jealous guy with his own s–t to work through. Either way, the word “dadgummit” never hurt so bad. — A.U.