The storied career of the 86-year-old musician began more than 70 years ago as the lead singer of her family band, The Staple Singers, of which Mavis is the last living member. She would go on to apply her singular rasp, keen ear, and strong social conscience to a body of work that stands as a living heritage of American music—singing on Civil Rights Movement anthems, collaborating with Bob Dylan, Prince, and Willie Nelson, and being inducted into both the Rock & Roll and Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Staples briefly considered retiring in 2023; instead, she recorded her quietly stunning 14th solo album. On Sad and Beautiful World, the icon interprets a few songs from contemporaries like Leonard Cohen and Curtis Mayfield, but less expected are her takes on newer and more obscure numbers—Kevin Morby’s 2016 protest song “Beautiful Strangers,” or the early Sparklehorse album cut from which Staples draws the title. She’s joined on the closer, a sweet take on Eddie Hinton’s “Everybody Needs Love,” by an all-star cast of backup singers: Bonnie Raitt, Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, plus guitar and drums by MJ Lenderman. And on “Human Mind,” the album’s sole original—written for Staples by Hozier and Allison Russell—she holds out a little hope amid the darkness: “Even in these days I find/This far down the line/I find good in us sometimes.”