Release Date: 18 July, 1995
Audio CD
Tracks
- Worthy
- Tiptoe
- Cradle And All
- Shy
- Sorry I Am
- Light Of Some Kind
- Not A Pretty Girl
- The Million You Never Made
- Hour Follows Hour
- 32 Flavors
- Asking Too Much
- This Bouqet
- Crime For Crime
- Coming Up
- Bonus Track
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Rating 5.0
TRUE*PUNK*ROCK*SOUL*SPIRITIn an America where punk is buying more and more into commercilization and mainstream culture, Ani DiFranco is a true-punk-rock-soul-crusader. A unique girl and her accoustic guitar daring to give corporate America the finger is more punk, in my book, than any group of over-pierced, over-tattooed, boys pretending to play power chords on over-distorted guitars. Cheers Ani!A talented girlThis is and probably will always be my favorite of Ani DiFranco's albums. It is the first one I bought, so a large part of it is probably nostalgia, but regardless it is an Ani classic. One of things I love so much about Ani is that she puts every single part of herself into her music: love, hate, fear, angst, and famously, views on every social and political issue you could think of. She doesn't have a line she won't cross, she truly puts herself out there in a way that artists rarely do today. "Someone whose not afraid of themself"... 3.5 starsThis was the album that really... ummm.... made unhappy... some of Ani's original fans. Even when it's still mostly acoustic, it often times has a kind of electric feel to it. Plus just the fact that it is more produced than anything she did previously, I think that somehow took the "she is mine" feel towards Ani away from some people. On this album she often-times doesn't sound like someone who just popped over to your apartment, sat down (with her acoustic guitar) on your floor and started baring her soul at the same time as she is crawling into the deepest recesses of your own. This is definitely an album that needed the studio and other musicians.
My own feelings towards this album have changed over the years. At one point I thought it was one of her very best discs, but now I think it is second-tier. There are great songs here. Some of my favorite Ani songs are here actually, but for some reason now I am not pinned-to-my-seat enthralled with this entire album the way I still am with many of her albums. Having said this, how could anyone completely dismiss this album, original fan or not? Sorry I Am could have been a top-shelf track on any of her previous releases.
The Million You Never Made is Ani's best F-U song to the major labels who were (and possibly still are, I guess, but wouldn't you think they know her answer by now??) courting her. I still have high hopes that someday Ani will perform a handful of concerts with Carla Bozulich, and when that glorious mini-tour comes, there is no way they can spare Million You Never Made from the intensity of their attack.
Even as I reach this point in my review I still haven't made up my mind as to how many stars to give this one. Overall I don't rank it with her pinnacle albums, but 3 stars seems low for what is, afterall, quite a good album.
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