Honest Lullaby

Sound DNA

• Folk
• Singer-Songwriter

• stripped-back
• earnest
• confessional

About

The late '70s and the '80s weren't an easy time for musicians who'd made their reputations with the natural sounds of previous eras; pop music was moving into slicker terrain. Undaunted, Joan Baez, veteran producer Barry Beckett, and a studio band in Muscle Shoals, Ala., went to work at maintaining the adult-contemporary feel of Baez's previous album, <i>Blowin' Away</i>. The title track was Baez's song for her son Gabriel Harris, and it captures the poignancy the singer/songwriter movement was capable of. "Let Your Love Flow," a 1976 hit for The Bellamy Brothers, gives her the chance to have fun and sink her teeth into an easy pop melody. "No Woman, No Cry"—a reggae standard from Bob Marley & The Wailers—gets its most literal rendition. The centerpiece is Jackson Browne's "Before the Deluge," which benefits from being the sort of "message song" Baez could always get behind. Its environmental concerns were close to her heart. Times were changing; Baez would soon be dropped by her record label and wouldn't make another studio album until 1987.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits