The Border (his 152nd album, according to Texas Monthly’s interactive ranking of all Willie Nelson albums) features 10 newly recorded studio performances by Willie Nelson, including four new Willie Nelson and Buddy Cannon compositions — "Once Upon a Yesterday", "What If I'm Out of My Mind", "Kiss Me When You're Through" and "How Much Does It Cost" — and "Hank's Guitar", a new song co-written by Buddy Cannon and Bobby Tomberlin. The song "The Border" describes the life and outside reality of a border guard ("I work on the border, I see what I see"), with Crowell’s composition described in Rolling Stone as "more humanist than political, but no less tragic for that."