Article Contributed by Big Hassle Media
Published on 2026-07-29
Soon has been a long time coming. The new album from Scott Fagan has been some 55 years in the making. Its songs, all drawn from the 1971 Broadway rock opera of the same name that Fagan conceived and wrote with songwriting partner Joe Kookoolis, were originally intended as the follow-up to his classic 1968 debut, South Atlantic Blues, but fate intervened.
A radical call to arms against the complacency of the modern world and a tone poem about art, radicalism, commerce, and corruption, the rock opera told an age-old story of an artist forced to make a devil’s bargain between principles and success. It drew on Fagan’s own experiences in the music industry and featured him in the lead role alongside Richard Gere, Barry Bostwick, Joe Butler of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Vicki Sue Robinson, and Peter Allen.
The original Broadway production, subject to creative meddling that compromised its creators’ vision, closed the day after its opening. A year later, it was restaged in Los Angeles for a brief two-week run. Then Fagan’s opus was lost to time. The album was shelved, never to be recorded or heard—until now.
Recorded over seven days in July 2025 at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, the sessions found the now 80-year-old singer-songwriter working with a crack Memphis rhythm section: drummer Terence Clark, guitarist Steve Selvidge, and keyboardist Rick Steff.
The 13 songs on Soon illustrate Fagan’s extraordinary facility and range as a singer and songwriter of great sensitivity, passion, and humor. From its rousing opener, “Let the World Begin Again,” through fiery protest songs and tender, heart-wrenching ballads, the album is by turns uplifting, mournful, righteous, giddy, soulful, and anthemic.
The first single, “Faces Names and Places,” is a rousing rocker calling for a thorough accounting of those responsible for the world’s ills and feels tailor-made for the current moment.
Listen to “Faces Names and Places” HERE.
It finds its opposite number in “Please Be Well,” the uplifting album closer and an empathetic plea to take care of oneself in a mixed-up, inside-out world.
On an album that feels as though it is made up of lost classics, the title track, “Soon”—a masterclass in classic songwriting that could easily have slipped into Frank Sinatra’s repertoire—may top them all. A ballad about hope, faith, yearning, and the promise of a brighter tomorrow, it is a song Fagan wrote as a 24-year-old that feels all the more poignant and affecting sung by him now, in the autumn of his years.
Pre-order or pre-save Soon HERE.
Fagan’s path through the music industry is a tale in itself. At the start of his career in the mid-1960s, he rubbed shoulders with legendary Brill Building songwriting team Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, writers of songs including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Save the Last Dance for Me,” and “This Magic Moment,” who mentored and managed him.
He also shared stages with Jimi Hendrix, Odetta, Richie Havens, and Tiny Tim. A succession of managers promised to lay the world at his feet but came up empty-handed, while deals with Columbia, Bang, Atco, Epic, and RCA left a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of singles that make up a small catalog of largely unheard masterpieces.
Somewhere along the way, Fagan fathered a son, acclaimed songwriter Stephin Merritt, although the two did not meet until 2012. Fagan also developed the musicians’ treatment and support program that became MusiCares. Recognition for his music largely eluded him until a 2016 reissue of South Atlantic Blues was heralded as the rediscovery of a lost classic.
Where Fagan’s debut dealt with the extreme poverty and deprivation of his childhood and teenage years growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the songs he wrote for Soon with Kookoolis cast their net into the wider world. As a songwriter, Fagan was instilled with a purpose: to inform, agitate, and uplift.
Although written more than half a century ago against the backdrop of Richard Nixon, student protests, 1960s radicalism, and the Vietnam War, the songs remain timeless. They speak to a world awash in chaos, war, inequity, and inequality while acting as a salve for tired souls and offering some measure of salvation.
Scott Fagan has been waiting a long time for the world to hear these songs. This time is the right time. The long, long wait is over.
Soon will be released November 6 via Fire Records and Earth Recordings.
Scott Fagan — Soon
1. Let the World Begin Again
2. Soon
3. Music Music
4. Roll Out the Morning
5. Faces Names and Places
6. Child of Sympathy
7. Straight
8. Wait
9. To Touch the Sky
10. What’s Gonna Happen to Me When I’m 50?
11. Sing a Happy Song
12. It Won’t Be Long
13. Please Be Well
