Bill Medley’s new album is called Straight From the Heart, well, because it is.
“It’s straight from the heart, that’s the truth,” says the singer, 84, who’ll be forever known as half of the Righteous Brothers, the soulful duo that rode the mega-hits “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “(You’re My) Soul and My Inspiration,” “Unchained Melody” and “Rock and Roll Heaven” to stardom in the 1960s and ‘70s, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But Medley’s latest project (available Feb. 21), his first album in a decade, is a country mile or two from those R&B-flavored Righteous Brothers’ hits of yesteryear. It’s built on a foundation of bona fide country music classics, all chosen because he loves them, relates to them and “feels” them as honest expressions of his own experiences. “I’ve been married four times,” he says. “I’ve had tremendous success; I’ve seen all the ups. But the downs were about as far down as you can go.” For him, those downs include the death of his wife, Paula, from Parkinson’s disease in 2020, and surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his throat. “So, I know the good, the bad and the ugly. I’m a rhythm-and-blues singer, but a good, sad country song is probably the best blues you can get.”
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Good — no, great — sad country songs like George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” Buck Owens’ “Crying Time,” the Kris Kristofferson-penned “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams, all of which he sings Straight From the Heart. Those country cornerstones tell “the story of my life,” he says. They’re alongside other tunes from Jackson Browne, Kenny Rogers, Don Williams, Hank Locklin and Garth Brooks. Country superstar Vince Gill joins him on a poignant duet of Gill’s 1994 hit “Whenever You Come Around,” and Michael McDonald, Keb’Mo’ and Shawn Colvin also blend their voices with Medley’s burnished baritone.
Medley hopes country fans realize he’s no Johnny-come-lately jumping on the Nashville bandwagon. “I don’t want people thinking I’m trying to sneak in, cause I’m not,” he says, noting that country music got his attention early. Growing up as a kid in California, he was transfixed watching TV commercials by flamboyant car-dealership kingpin Cal Worthington, who dressed like a dapper cowboy and wrote his own country theme music. “It sounds stupid, but I remember clear as day, loving those songs,” Medley tells Parade. “And that was way before I was a Righteous Brother.”
And Straight From the Heart isn’t Medley’s first rodeo, as they say. After the Righteous Brothers broke up in 1968, he was signed two different times to Nashville-based record labels as a solo country act. He toured with Loretta Lynn and opened shows for Alabama. He even charted a Top 20 country hit, “I Still Do,” in 1984, and was nominated the following year by the Academy of Country Music for top New Male Artist. (But he lost to another “newcomer,” Vince Gill.)
“Country music has always been a big part of my life,” Medley says.
But he also notes he’ll “always be a Righteous Brother,” alluding to the glory days of his stratospherically successful collaborations with his original singing partner, Bobby Hatfield. The duo initially broke up in 1968 but reunited for touring and recording several times over the years before Hatfield’s death in 2003. The Brothers’ musical melding of “blue-eyed” R&B harmonies with soaring pop power made them superstars, and their songs became part of the pop-cultural mainstream, used in movies and TV shows — like in Top Gun, when Tom Cruise and his flyboy buddies serenade Kelly Preston in a bar with a boozy “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”
Bobby Hatfield & Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers in 1965.Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage
Early on, the Brothers toured with rock ‘n’ roll royalty, and even The King himself, Elvis Presley, was an admirer who even covered one of their hits, “Unchained Melody,” in 1977. And when Medley and Hatfield were performing regularly on a ‘60s TV show called Shindig, “Elvis would call the producer every week,” Medley recalls, requesting one of his favorite Righteous Brothers tunes, “Little Latin Lupe Lu.”
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Medley remembers the craziness of opening shows for the Beatles on their first U.S. tour, in 1964. He tells how, every night, when he and Hatfield would take the stage, they’d be smacked with a deafening wall of sound — thousands of kids screaming “We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!” He says he “felt like we were getting a front-row seat to history.” Later, on tour with the Rolling Stones, the Righteous Brothers found a kinship with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in their shared love of Black artists and blues. “Musically, they were coming from where we were coming from. They felt ‘real.’”
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What feels real for Medley right now, though, is his return to country music, which includes an upcoming appearance at Nashville’s most venerated venue. He’ll play the Grand Ole Opry Saturday night, Feb. 22. “I’ve been doing this for 60 years, in front of thousands of people,” he says. “And for some reason, I’m a little nervous about it. So many great artists have graced that stage.”
And speaking of stages, he continues performing those timeless Righteous Brothers hits with his “new” singing partner of almost a decade, Bucky Heard, in their musical residency onstage at the South Point Hotel in Las Vegas. Medley says the magic of those “old” tunes is still very much alive with audiences today. “We start singing, and people start holding hands and hugging and kissing,” he says.
As he embarks on his latest musical chapter, he can’t help but reflect on all the miles, the ups and the downs of a career that began back at the dawn of the ‘60s. What keeps him going, now midway into his eighth decade? “The audience,” he says. “And the love I get back from them. When I go onstage, I feel like I’m 25 years old. And hopefully that never changes.”
Straight From the Heart is now available wherever you get your music.
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