Willie J Healey feels ‘lucky’ with the announce of his new album
Willie J Healey returns today to announce his new album Lucky for release on 12th March 2027 via V2, alongside a run of UK headline tour dates. Also shared today is the new album's lead single 'Benjamin'.
Photo credit: AJ Stark
The revered Oxford songwriter’s talent for mining vintage textures and giving them a contemporary facelift appears evolved and ambitious on new album Lucky, his first full-length since 2023’s acclaimed outing Bunny. Working more acoustically here, and with a tight-knit circle of friends accompanying him, Healey’s instinctive knack for melody and razor-sharp ability to lock horns with personal themes and transform them into something universal is immediate. The road to Lucky's emergence has indeed been largely steeped in the idea of creating something candid and more personal than he has previously.
With signposts to artists like Neil Young, Yo La Tengo and Wilco, Lucky unfolds into a record that very intentionally mirrors where Willie finds himself in life right now. It has the lived-in sound of a record that can only come from an artist willing to be open about their experiences, good or bad. The core of the album is rooted in his understanding that he is more established as a person now, and there is more life to look back on and feel inspired by. Personal themes criss-cross with big ideas - life, death, God, religion - that in trademark Willie J Healey style are carried through with easy charisma, breezy songwriting and a touch of humour. Lucky condenses his life experience and brings him into a place where he says he feels in the "fortunate enough position to laugh at some of it. There's a kind of life clarity there that I think I feel really lucky to have had when I was writing the songs."
On his album return and new single 'Benjamin', Willie says:
"It felt good for me to get back to some real deal stuff. I really sat down and worked through everything on an acoustic guitar, feelings too - which is why most of the songs have very little electric guitars on them.
I moved house and live by a park now, I set up my studio in the back of the house and wrote most of the songs in that little room, pretty isolated in a nice way.
I wrote Benjamin really quickly, it was one of those gifts. Just came right to me! We tracked all of these acoustic guitars and I did this big gasp at the beginning because I think the song kinda feels like somebody who’s asking to be saved by whatever’s out there saving things. It's got this hopeful desperation thing going on.
There’s nothing too fancy about the recordings we got, which I’m very happy about. I felt slightly caught up in making things slick - I didn’t want to do that this time.. I couldn’t be bothered. To me it feels direct and simple! Which is weirdly hard to do sometimes."
Pre-SAVE new album Lucky HERE
