Artist Guide

Al Green

Originally published in Daddy B. Nice's New Album Reviews.

February 20, 2026:

AL GREEN: To Love Somebody EP (2026 Fat Possum Records)
Five Stars ***** Can't miss. Pure Southern Soul heaven.

Buy Al Green's new TO LOVE SOMEBODY EP at Apple.

TO LOVE SOMEBODY EP Track List:

1. To Love Somebody
2. Perfect Day (feat. Raye)
3. I Found A Reason
4. Everybody Hurts

Let me set the stage for this review by relating a memory from my New York City days. This was early nineties, I'd guess. I was walking through Soho returning home from a club around two am. I saw a couple standing in front of a storefront ahead but didn’t cross the street as I sometimes did that time of night, since I was almost upon them and they looked safe and absorbed in their own thing. The guy was in jeans, boots and sport coat and the woman looked similarly hip, and as I passed I was struck by their gravitas. Then I was past them homeward bound and I realized it was Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, the king and queen of Downtown, and I smiled to myself and thought, "All's right with the world."

Flash forward three decades. Despite his rock-solid, mainstream fame, Al Green has been the most neglected of southern soul's baby-boomer generation, having disappeared down the rabbit-hole of gospel since his early-seventies' masterpieces with Willie Mitchell at Hi Records in Memphis. But you don't have to be a nostalgia-hooked auntie to appreciate the cutting-edge force of TO LOVE SOMEBODY, an unforeseen bombshell of an EP combining Green's vocal grit and brilliance with state-of-the-art production that hasn't been seen since his early-seventies' heyday. To Love Somebody reminds us of how much studio money went into the great 20th century soul tracks and, sadly, how much was lost with their demise. But it's also a stark reminder in this age in which politics and culture are broken into micro-societies---and music into islands twixt never the twain shall meet---that white counter-culture was once umbilically connected to black culture (from which it derived its inspiration) and vice versa. So what is still second nature to Al Green, in this case covering songs made famous by white singers and songwriters---the late Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground, The Bee Gees, R.E.M.---is by today's standards a revelation.

This quartet of songs is as deep and serious as you can get. When Green sings, "I found a reason for living," he's doing so from a perspective, hopefully, most of us have been spared: highs of hyper-sensitivity and depths of despair. Both Green and Lou Reed struggled with heroin addiction, and Reed's words (from his early days with The Velvet Underground) mesh perfectly with Green's hyper-vulnerability and preoccupation with mortality. Reed's "Perfect Day," from his signature album "Walk On The Wild Side," is interpreted quite accurately by Green (assisted by young British wunderkind Raye) as a moment of joy balancing precariously on a razor's edge of dread. And "Everybody Hurts, taken from "R.E.M.'s anti-suicide anthem of the same name, makes the existential foreboding almost unbearable. In contrast, Green's treatment of "To Love Somebody," a cover of the The Bee Gees' late-sixties' hit, seems almost giddy with gratitude, a respite of happiness in a world where the innocent and vulnerable survive only in glimpses.

With Al Green's new TO LOVE SOMEBODY EP we're a long way from the tipsy, happy-go-lucky southern soul of "Wave your hands in the air / Like you just don't care." And musically we're in a gothic cathedral, not a shotgun house-turned-chapel. Al Green's psyche couldn't be distilled with any more purity. This quartet of songs proclaims, "All's right with the world." And if your preacher's sermons are getting a little dry, listen to this on Sunday morning. Al has found a reason for living.

Listen to all the tracks from Al Green's TO LOVE SOMEBODY on YouTube.

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Originally published in Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 Singles.

Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "BREAKING" Southern Soul Singles For. . .

February 2026

1. "To Love Somebody"-------Al Green

Al Green. Pass the tissue. Tears welling up. Not as old as Johnnie Taylor would be if he were still alive. (Incidentally, J.T.'s fabulous, AI-generated "Soul Heaven" short is currently blowing up TikTok.) Nor as old as Bobby Rush, Latimore or Clarence Carter. Yet of all these greats---and despite his mainstream fame---Al Green has been the most neglected by 21st-century southern soul-ers, having disappeared down the rabbit-hole of gospel for decades. But you don't have to be a nostalgia-hooked grannie to appreciate the cutting-edge force of this unforeseen bombshell combining vocal grit and brilliance, authentic emotion and state-of-the-art production on a scale contemporary southern soul has seldom if ever attained, notwithstanding 2025's award-winning (and jaw-dropping) "Gas Station Love". With its symphonic instrumental track blending live organ, piano, violins, viola, cello and more, "To Love Somebody" reminds us of how much studio money went into the great 20th century soul tracks and, sadly, how much was lost with their demise. In fact, this cover of an early Bee Gee's hit single marks the best use of strings of any southern soul song of this century. From the brand new four-track Al Green EP of the same name.

Listen to Al Green singing "To Love Somebody" on YouTube.

--Daddy B. Nice