Rita Wilson announces superstar duets album

Now & Forever: Duets due Sept 27th

With her breathtaking new album Rita Wilson Now & Forever: Duets, Rita Wilson solidifies her place as a major force in today’s musical landscape. Her fifth studio album was co-produced by Wilson and GRAMMY Award-winning producer Matt Rollings and will be released on September 27th. The project sees Wilson return to exploring her gift as an interpretive singer, as she revisits the songs that made her fall in love with music. A collection of classic, timeless songs from the Seventies, each track has been newly and lovingly arranged as a duet showcasing Wilson’s crystalline vocals alongside some of the greatest male singers of our time spanning genres including pop, country and rock.

A set of true modern standards, Rita Wilson Now & Forever: Duets sees Wilson singing alongside giants including Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson, Jackson Browne, Tim McGraw, Elvis Costello, Keith Urban, Leslie Odom Jr, Josh Groban, Vince Gill and Jimmie Allen, illustrating the high regard in which she is held by her peers.

For Wilson the album is a tribute to the songs that made her discover music, and the melodies and stories that defined a generation. “I wanted to honor where I came from with songs from the Seventies,” she says. “It was really about showing enormous appreciation for the songwriting of that period—how these songs are still relevant even though they’re fifty years old. This album is really a continuation of sharing who I am musically, and what it is that I want to say.”

The project is an idea that Wilson had been considering for several years. When the pandemic shut down the world, she reached out to producer Matt Rollings, hoping that musicians spending time off the road would be longing to make music. “And that’s exactly what happened,” she says. “It all fell together incredibly smoothly.”

The first single to be unveiled from the album was Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Songbird” with Josh Groban. The pair performed the song live on stage at New York City’s famed Radio City Music Hall earlier this year.

The first person to jump on board the project was no less than Willie Nelson, for a version of Paul Simon’s “Slip Slidin’ Away.” Others followed, including Smokey Robinson, with an impassioned rendition of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway’s “Where is the Love,” a blistering vocal from Elvis Costello on Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire” (popularized by the Pointer Sisters), and a majestic performance on “Massachusetts” by Leslie Odom, Jr. The album also includes not-to-be-missed, inspired interpretations of the stirring Van Morrison track “Crazy Love” with Keith Urban, the moving ballad “If” with Tim McGraw (originally performed by Bread), the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” with Jimmie Allen and Badfinger’s “Without You” with Vince Gill (also covered by Harry Nillson).

Wilson has established herself as a prolific, authentic, and widely admired singer/songwriter who has fully immersed herself in her passion for music. She’s released four studio albums, a series of three inter-connected EP’s entitled Trilogy, and a steady flow of singles includes the moving, “Everybody Cries,” from the film The Outpost, which won the Hollywood Music in Media Award for Outstanding Song for Independent Film. She has performed on some of the world’s greatest stages including the Grand Ole Opry, Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Ryman and the Sydney Opera House, to name a few. Now a festival fixture, she has appeared at Stagecoach, Tortuga and CMA Fest among many others.