The Outlaws is a compilation album by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser, released by RCA Records in 1976.

This new movement featured a more "progressive" sound, typified by the music of Jennings and Nelson but also inspired by songwriters like Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joe Shaver, Mickey Newbury, Lee Clayton, David Allan Coe and Townes Van Zandt.

As author Michael Streissguth observes, "Bradley hired Rolling Stone's Chet Flippo (who would write Jerry Bradley's entry in The Encyclopedia of Country Music in 1998) to pen liner notes, and looked to a Time Life book about the American West as inspiration for the album's iconic album cover, which featured photographs of Colter, Glaser, Jennings, and Nelson on a parched, bullet-riddled wanted poster.

Jennings, who always viewed the outlaw image with a degree of cynicism, conceded in the audio version of his autobiography Waylon that the movement was rooted in musical integrity: The cover was pure Old West—Dodge City and Tombstone.

Now, we weren't just playing bad guys; we took our stand outside the country music rules, its set ways, locking the door on its own jail cell.

In the audio version of his autobiography, Jennings confessed, "It was an oddly downbeat way to start an album, but it seemed to sum up the frontier loneliness that often came hand-in-hand with our ideas of rugged individualism."

Jennings also sings Billy Joe Shavers's "Honky Tonk Heroes," the title cut from his classic 1973 LP about "lovable losers" and "no account boozers" who "danced holes in (their) shoes."

Nelson's other solo track, "Me and Paul," which also appeared on the Yesterday's Wine album, seemed to echo the outlaw ethos with its tales of suspicious cops, drug busts and lines like, "We'd come to play and not just for the ride."

In keeping with the cowboy theme, Glaser tips his hat to Jimmie Rodgers on a rousing version of "T For Texas" and provides some comic relief with the Shel Silverstein nugget "Put Another Log on the Fire."

Jennings' and Colter's duet on "Suspicious Minds" had originally been released in 1970; at that time the song peaked at #25 on the Billboard country singles chart but, upon its rerelease in 1976, shot up to #2.

Largely written by Jennings, it had served as the title track of his 1972 album and had also been recorded by Nelson for his LP The Words Don't Fit the Picture, also released that same year.

According to Joe Nick Patoski's 2008 memoir Willie Nelson, the live performance of "Good Hearted Woman" on Wanted: The Outlaws was recorded at Geno McCoslin's Western Place in Dallas, although there has been speculation that the track was a studio creation because of what appears to be canned audience applause.

Thus, a constant clash of traditional and innovative influences dominates each artist's selections, in most instances, finely woven lyrics hiding behind still slick studio concepts."