The New RS 500: #492 Bonnie Raitt — Nick of Time

Release Date: March 21, 1989

Label: Capitol Records

Have I heard this album before? Nope

2003 List Ranking: 229; 2012 List Ranking: 230; Does the move feel appropriate?: Given the amount of new-ish albums that the list has added since the last iteration, it does kind of make sense that an album over 30 years old would slip a bit, though falling over 250 spots, when it stayed in almost the exact same spot between 2003 and 2012, seems a bit odd.

Is This Album One of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time? For me, it’s a no, and I’m not entirely sure why it’s a yes for Rolling Stone.

Review: I really do not mean to offend and all respect to Ms. Raitt, but this is absolutely not for me. I probably could have guessed this based on the release date before going into the album, but this is the exact kind of Phil Collins-esque 1980s production that I absolutely loathe. Bonnie’s voice and guitar playing are great, and the songwriting is there, but everything about the way this album sounds is the antithesis of stuff I generally enjoy. Furthermore, if I want to listen to something in this lane, I’m probably going to reach for something like Tedeschi Trucks Band before I reach for this, though I’m sure Susan Tedeschi would probably call me an idiot and a fool for writing such dismissive stuff about Bonnie Raitt. I really, really wanted to go into this liking it but the production absolutely ruins any chance of that for me. I’ll check out some other Raitt records to see if maybe this is an outlier but, yeah, it’s a no from me.