Pirates (album)
| Pirates | ||||
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| Studio album by Rickie Lee Jones | ||||
| Released | July 15, 1981 | |||
| Recorded | January 1980 - April 1981 | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 38:38 | |||
| Label | Warner Bros. | |||
| Producer | Lenny Waronker, Russ Titelman | |||
| Rickie Lee Jones chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| Robert Christgau | C+ |
| Rolling Stone |
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Pirates is the second album by Chicago-born singer, songwriter, and musician Rickie Lee Jones, released in July 1981, two years after her eponymous debut Rickie Lee Jones. The album is partially an account of her break-up with fellow musician Tom Waits after the success of her debut album. The cover is a 1976-copyrighted photo by Brassaï.
Initial recording for Pirates began in January 1980, with the live recordings for "Skeletons" and "The Returns" from January 30 from these sessions kept on the final album. In the same month, Jones picked up a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Jones came to album sessions at Warner Bros. Recording Studios in North Hollywood with five songs, which were recorded and arranged in a two-month spurt in early 1980 before Jones was given an extended break for further writing. Album sessions reconvened in November 1980 and concluded in April 1981, three months before the album release.
All songs were copyrighted on June 9, 1980, as well as “Hey Bub,” which was omitted from the album release, except for “Living It Up” and “Traces of the Western Slopes,” copyrighted in July 1981, at the time of the album release.
Jones relocated to New York City after her split from Tom Waits, and soon set up home with a fellow musician, Sal Bernardi from New Jersey, whom she had met in Venice, California in the mid-1970s, writing in their apartment in Greenwich Village. Bernardi, who had been referenced in the lyrics to "Weasel and the White Boys Cool" from her debut, was to become a frequent collaborator with Jones, and they composed the epic eight-minute suite "Traces of the Western Slopes" together.
Jones started writing the first songs from the album - "Hey Bub" (unreleased until 1983), "We Belong Together" and "Pirates" - in the autumn of 1979.
Elsewhere, the music on Pirates is often cinematic, with influences ranging from Leonard Bernstein to Bruce Springsteen and Laura Nyro. The album is more musically ambitious than its predecessor, and explores elements of jazz, R&B, bebop, pop and Broadway, with multiple changes in tempo and mood within most songs.
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Wikipedia