Blurring the Edges by Meredith Brooks

Blurring the Edges, Meredith Brooks's second album, arrived on Capitol in 1997, a long way down the road from her self-titled debut and a stint in the short-lived Graces. In between she had stepped away from the business altogether, and what pulled the Oregon guitarist back was a distaste for grunge's sour cynicism: she wanted songs that pushed the other way. She wrote most of them with her friend Shelly Peiken, David Ricketts produced, and Geza X took the controls for one track.

The result is sharp-elbowed, hook-first rock with a grin on its face, and "Bitch" was the calling card, a strutting single that went top twenty all over the world and put her in the Grammy race twice. Critics split, several filing her next to Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow, but the album went platinum in the States, sold past three million copies worldwide, and landed her a slot opening for the Rolling Stones.

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