'I'm Easy' by Keith Carradine: 'That's Not a Single, There's No Way'
- edgarstreetbooks
- Feb 22
- 2 min read
‘100 Greatest 70s Pop Songs’ Book Excerpt
Frank Mastropolo
Keith Carradine wrote and performed “I’m Easy” for the 1975 Robert Altman film Nashville. Carradine, as womanizing musician Tom Frank, performs the song to an audience of past, present, and possibly future lovers.
“There’s a reason why Nashville is a lot of people’s favorite Robert Altman film,” Carradine told Ethan Alter. “It’s an absolute masterwork that has stood the test of time and beyond.
“The ‘I’m Easy’ sequence was an example of Altman’s loving cynicism at its best. I wrote that song as a straightahead love song with no double entendre. The fact that he put it in the context of the various liaisons my character had was his genius. It made for an unforgettable cinematic moment.”
“I’m Easy” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Carradine recorded a single version of “I’m Easy” at a slightly higher tempo with added percussion, synthesizer, and keyboards, which was a Top 20 hit in 1976. Carradine explained in the AV Club that the record would have charted higher if it had been released as a single from the Nashville soundtrack album.
“It went up to №17 on the Billboard chart, and it probably would’ve made it to №1 if there hadn’t been two versions of it in the marketplace,” said Carradine.
“ABC Records, who had the soundtrack for Nashville, said, ‘That’s not a single, there’s no way, it’s not gonna get any airplay.’ So we had the recording, but they didn’t put it out! “So I recorded another version of it for my own personal album that John Guerin produced under the aegis of David Geffen, who signed me to Asylum Records.”
A Buffalo, NY, radio station played the Nashville album cut and received a tremendous response.
“They played the song one day on the air, and they immediately got, like, 150 phone calls, people calling in and saying, ‘What was that? I want to hear that again!’
“All of a sudden, it took off, and people were trying to buy it, but they couldn’t, because ABC had not put it out there, and the Asylum version wasn’t out yet.
“Then the thing won the Academy Award, and it was still a month after it won the Oscar before you could buy the single in a record store.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Greatest 70s Pop Songs, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.
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