Sweet Revenge by John Prine

Sweet Revenge, John Prine's third album, came out on Atlantic in 1973, and it's the sound of a songwriter settling into a band instead of hiding behind one. Arif Mardin produced it, cutting most of it at Quadraphonic Sound Studios in Nashville, with "Blue Umbrella" and "Onomatopoeia" done at Atlantic's own studios in New York City. Plenty of the players from his debut came back, and Prine biographer Eddie Huffman heard a singer who had grown enormously in two years and now sat easily inside the arrangements.

The best story belongs to "Dear Abby". The studio take with the band came out stiff, and by Prine's own account it lost all its humor, so they kept a version cut once, live, at a show at New York's State University in New Paltz, where the song had a crowd to play to. "Please Don't Bury Me" is on here too, folk and country rubbing shoulders in that easy Prine way.

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