Pop songwriting since the Beatles has implied that a singer is telling his or her own story. But as frequently as not these two were using their voices to tell somebody else's: "I am an old woman," Prine sang at age 25 to open one of his signature tunes, "Angel from Montgomery." Indeed, few have written about old people with more sensitivity than he and Withers in songs like the former's "Hello in There" and the latter's "Grandma's Hands," both of which illuminate the burdens of figures too often invisible to society.