Give It Up by Bonnie Raitt

Give It Up, Bonnie Raitt's second album, came out on Warner Bros. in 1972, and it's the record where the young singer proves she can hold a whole album together on her own terms. She cut it at Bearsville Studios with producer Michael Cuscuna, and the mix is gloriously loose: folk, blues, R&B and a soft-rock glow, with tender ballads sitting right next to rollicking folk-rock workouts.

Seven of the ten songs are covers, but she sings them as if they'd been written for her, and the words keep circling back to womanhood, love affairs and learning to be easy in her own skin. "Love Has No Pride" is the heartbreaker, all wounded dignity, while "Love Me Like a Man" struts and smolders. Critics liked the singing and the playing from the start, it was her first album to reach the Billboard LP chart, and Rolling Stone later named it among the 500 greatest albums ever made.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.