Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Palace

Will Oldham was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He came to music through acting: his first film role was a teenage preacher in John Sayles's Matewan (1987), and while he attended Brown University and tried to work as an actor he began making songs, first as a project for the ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon. His first album, There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You (1993), came out on Drag City as Palace Brothers, with members of the Louisville band Slint playing behind him. Until 1997 he kept changing the Palace name, to Palace Songs, Palace Music and plain Palace. He explained that each record had different people and different sounds, so each deserved a different name. The Toronto Star called that debut quietly beautiful and slightly askew. Days in the Wake (1994) followed, and Mark Deming of AllMusic called it the simplest work in the Palace canon and among the very best.

Viva Last Blues (1995), recorded by Steve Albini, is the Palace record that Pitchfork later placed at number 60 among the best albums of the 1990s. Arise Therefore (1996) carried no artist name on its sleeve, and Joya (1997) appeared under his own name.

A new name

In 1998 he settled on Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Rain Taxi says the name was coined on a flight over Australia. Oldham pointed to Bonnie Prince Charlie, to Nat King Cole, and to the later realization that Billy the Kid was William Bonney. He told the Guardian the name was kind of regal, and that he had created Billy to take care of the work and the performing.

I See a Darkness (1999) was the first album under it. Bob Arellano, Colin Gagon, Paul Oldham, David Pajo and Peter Townsend play on it. Samir Khan of Pitchfork called it Oldham's consummate offering and a record that demands solitary reverence. Oldham said the goal was to mix everything up and learn to have fun with ominous issues. Songs such as Death to Everyone and Nomadic Revery (All Around) show how.

Johnny Cash recorded the title song for American III: Solitary Man (2000), with Oldham singing backing vocals. Oldham told Pitchfork the death association was more prevalent when you hear Cash sing I See a Darkness. Pitchfork ranked the album ninth among the best of the 1990s in 2003, and Stereogum later put it first among his albums.

Afterward

Ease Down the Road (2001), made over five weeks in the studio, is credited to twelve musicians. Master and Everyone (2003) went the other way, sparse and wintry, and Pitchfork's Brent S. Sirota thought it fine but short of the black solemnity of its predecessor. In 2004 Oldham redid Palace songs in Nashville with country session musicians on Sings Greatest Palace Music, and in 2005 he made Superwolf with Matt Sweeney.

The Letting Go (2006) was recorded in Reykjavik with the producer Valgeir Sigurdsson, string arrangements by Nico Muhly and the singer Dawn McCarthy. Lie Down in the Light followed in 2008. In 2012 the Now Here's My Plan EP reworked old songs, among them a sped-up I See a Darkness, and a book of interviews with Alan Licht appeared. The albums have kept coming, most recently The Purple Bird (2025) and We Are Together Again (2026). He has also kept acting, with the lead role in Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy (2006).

Covers and standing

Stereogum's Michael Nelson wrote that I See a Darkness stands alongside The Seventh Seal as one of the best works of art about death. Steve Adey covered the title song in 2006, Rosalia in 2017, and Anna Calvi with Perfume Genius in 2025. Mark Lanegan and Soulsavers recorded You Will Miss Me When I Burn in 2009, and Mark Kozelek recorded New Partner in 2008. Pitchfork's Matt LeMay called that song, from Viva Last Blues, possibly the finest Oldham has written.