Willie Nelson Releases New Song About Gay Cowboys

More than 25 years ago, Willie Nelson’s music made hearts flutter by painting vivid images of rough-hewn, hard-working range-riding cowboys who secretly hid their loneliness and sadness behind long days in the saddle. Now his latest musical epistle is about a different kind of secret cowboys might be hiding.

On Tuesday, Howard Stern celebrated Valentine’s Day on his nationally syndicated satellite radio show by debuting Nelson’s new song. The tune, called "Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)" is likely to be the first gay cowboy song ever recorded by a major recording artist. The song is available exclusively through iTunes, Apple’s Internet portal for buying and downloading popular music and videos. The song features Nelson’s trademark deadpan singing voice delivering lines such as, "Inside every cowboy there’s a lady who’d love to slip out," and "What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?"

Nelson sings "He Was a Friend of Mine" on the soundtrack for Brokeback Mountain, but his gay-cowboy ballad was written long before this year’s Oscars made gay cowboys a hot topic of discussion worldwide. The song was written by a songwriter named Ned Sublette in 1981, during the Urban Cowboy craze and he always imagined Willie Nelson singing it. A few years after he wrote the song, someone passed a copy along to Nelson, who didn’t do anything with it.

But last year Nelson decided to take advantage of the furor over the gay cowboy themes in Brokeback Mountain and he dug out Sublette’s song and blew the dust off it. According to Nelson’s record label, Lost Highway, he recorded it last year at his Pedernales studio in Texas. If this song does well in reviving Nelson’s flagging career, perhaps he should think about rerecording some of his most famous songs to incorporate the same trendy theme. He could even appeal to both sides of the issue—"Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Gay Cowboys" for the conservatives, and "My Heroes Have Always Been Gay Cowboys" for the liberals.