John Prine has been a hero of the singer-songwriter world since the release of his milestone 1971 self-titled debut. With a rough-hewn twang informed by his family's Southern heritage, the Chicagoan established himself as an American treasure by using plain-spoken language and simple but incisive country and folk melodies to spin tales that pack an enormous emotional wallop. Whether lamenting the loneliness of old age on “Hello in There” or celebrating the joys of intoxication on “Illegal Smile”, Prine did everything with a deeply absorbing mix of poetry, humanity and cockeyed humour, right through his bittersweet 2018 late-career masterpiece The Tree of Forgiveness. He died on 7 April 2020 at the age of 73.