Brand new from Willie Nile, with a guest appearance from Steve Earle. While many of us have struggled to salvage a sense of purpose from a year's worth of isolation, veteran New York rocker Willie Nile has tapped into his own lockdown experience as a source of inspiration for the set of haunting new songs that comprise his emotion-charged new release, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Although the veteran singer-songwriter borrowed its title from the beloved 1951 science-fiction movie classic, the album was actually inspired by the sight of Nile's beloved hometown temporarily turned into a desolate ghost town. "It came from seeing the deserted streets of downtown Manhattan, with all the shops and stores boarded up and all these beautiful buildings looking down on everything," Nile recalls, "But one Friday night last June, crossing Varick Street, I realized that there wasn't a car in sight, and that I could have laid down in the middle of the street without anyone noticing. The title The Day the Earth Stood Still hit me, and I carried it around in my head for awhile, and eventually it sparked this set of songs."