Sturgill Simpson Dropped the Johnny Blueskies Album Early on YouTube, and YouTube Commenters Are Stoked
Mutiny After Midnight—the new full-length from Sturgill Simpson’s alter ego Johnny Blueskies, an instant contender for Album of the Year as well as Somehow Audibly Greasiest Album of the Year—dropped ahead of schedule over the weekend, when Simpson (who’d promised this one would be a streaming-service-spurning physical-only release) threw the whole thing up on YouTube. We are still processing the album itself and its beer-bong cocktail of life-in-the-fast-lane disco, fevered curly-guitar-cord boogie, true-testimonial soul, and possible-final-season-of-American-democracy anxiety. Two things we can say for sure right away, though, are that 1) these songs will absolutely smoke live, and 2) as excited as we are about this album, no one is anywhere near as amped about it as the commenters on YouTube who digested it over the weekend in real time (and in many cases, from the sound of it, may have needed to call out of work on Monday to recuperate.) The saying goes that everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day; on New Sturgill Simpson AKA Johnny Blueskies Day, if these commenters are to be believed, …

