Fat City (Shawn Colvin album)

Fat City is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin. It was released on October 27, 1992, on Columbia Records.

Fat City
Studio album by
ReleasedOctober 27, 1992
RecordedLarry Klein's House
Length55:34
LabelColumbia
Producer
Shawn Colvin chronology
Steady On
(1989)
Fat City
(1992)
Cover Girl
(1994)

Fat City peaked at number 142 on the Billboard 200 and at number 2 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart.[1] "Round of Blues" and "I Don't Know Why" charted on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and Adult Contemporary single charts, respectively.[2] "Tenderness on the Block" is a cover version of a song released on Warren Zevon's 1978 album Excitable Boy. Opening track "Polaroids" provided the title of her greatest hits album Polaroids: A Greatest Hits Collection, which was released in 2004.

Songwriting

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In an interview with Performing Songwriter magazine, Colvin described how she co-wrote songs for Fat City:[3]

The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music. Like on "Round of Blues" I wrote the whole song but Larry Klein said that it needed a bridge. So he wrote the bridge and I wrote the words to it. But Elly [Brown] and I really shared every part of ["Set the Prairie on Fire"] equally. She wrote some of the words, I wrote some of the words, she wrote some of the music, I wrote some of the music.

Reception

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Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic     [4]
Chicago Tribune    [5]
Q     [6]
Rolling Stone     [7]
The Village VoiceC[8]

In Rolling Stone, Stacey D'Erasmo described Fat City as "a fatter, happier record" than Colvin's 1989 debut Steady On and commended "her ability to convey the ambivalent wonder of meeting happiness as if for the first time."[7]

Track listing

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No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Polaroids"Shawn Colvin5:53
2."Tennessee"4:21
3."Tenderness on the Block"5:05
4."Round of Blues"4:47
5."Monopoly"Colvin4:25
6."Orion in the Sky"
  • Colvin
  • Klein
6:38
7."Climb On (A Back That's Strong)"
  • Colvin
  • Leventhal
4:16
8."Set the Prairie on Fire"
  • Colvin
  • Elly Brown
7:01
9."Object of My Affection"
  • Colvin
  • Leventhal
3:53
10."Kill the Messenger"Colvin4:36
11."I Don't Know Why"Colvin4:37

Personnel

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References

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  1. ^ Billboard album milestones from Allmusic
  2. ^ Billboard singles milestones from Allmusic
  3. ^ Born to be Telling her Story, from Performing Songwriter magazine via taxi.com, an A&R company
  4. ^ Woodstra, Chris. "Fat City – Shawn Colvin". AllMusic. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
  5. ^ Kening, Dan (November 12, 1992). "Shawn Colvin: Fat City (Columbia)". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
  6. ^ Cooper, Mark (May 1993). "Shawn Colvin: Fat City". Q. No. 80. p. 89.
  7. ^ a b D'Erasmo, Stacey (January 7, 1993). "Shawn Colvin: Fat City". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on July 9, 2008. Retrieved November 18, 2015.
  8. ^ Christgau, Robert (December 1, 1992). "Turkey Shoot". The Village Voice. Retrieved July 16, 2024.