| History | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1992 | |||
| Studio | The Hit Factory, New York City | |||
| Genre | Folk, folk rock | |||
| Length | 46:06 | |||
| Label | Charisma | |||
| Producer | Loudon Wainwright III, Jeffrey Lesser | |||
| Loudon Wainwright III chronology | ||||
| ||||
History is an album by the American musician Loudon Wainwright III, released in 1992 on Charisma Records. [1] [2] Wainwright supported the album with North American and European tours. [3] [4]
Wainwright chose the tracks from around 25 songs he had written over the course of four years. [5] [6] He originally wanted to use Family Album as the title. [7] His ex-wives, Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche, provided backing vocals on "So Many Songs". [8] Syd Straw sang on "When I'm at Your House". [9] A banjo was used on "The Doctor". [10]
The final track, "A Handful of Dust", is an adaptation of a song written by Wainwright's father. [11] "Hitting You" references an incident with his daughter Martha Wainwright. [12] "A Father and a Son" is directed to his son, Rufus Wainwright. [13] "The Picture" was inspired by a childhood photograph of Wainwright and his sister Teddy. [14] "Talking New Bob Dylan", commissioned by NPR, is both a tribute to Bob Dylan and a reflection on being labeled, in the early 1970s, "a new Dylan". [15] [16]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [17] |
| Robert Christgau |  [18] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music |  [19] |
| The Republican | [10] |
| Toronto Sun | [20] |
The New York Times noted that "the core of the album examines family history with a directness and a pained honesty, and it takes up a subject—childrearing—that most baby-boom songwriters have unaccountably avoided except when mistily celebrating a birth"; Stephen Holden later listed it as the third best album of 1992. [21] [22] The Morning Call considered History to be the sixth best album of the year; the Houston Chronicle included it on a list of the year's best records. [23] [24] The Sydney Morning Herald deemed the album "about as close to a masterpiece as any musician could reasonably expect to produce." [25]
Rolling Stone wrote: "The soul of Wasp angst, of quiet bleeding on summer lawns, Wainwright's spare folk laments are absolutely exceptional." [26] The Philadelphia Inquirer called History "a masterful scrapbook of songs about raising kids, losing love and growing old that makes plenty of good jokes and makes them hurt." [27] The Toronto Sun opined that "History is so plainspoken, its truths occasionally don't reveal themselves for two or three listens ... Perhaps for that very reason, it stands as one of the year's finest albums." [20]
AllMusic considered the album to be a masterpiece, writing that it "features a mix of the humorous and the serious, the autobiographical and the observational, the rockin' and the balladic, all wrapped up in some classy arrangements." [17]
All tracks composed by Loudon Wainwright III
Loudon Snowden Wainwright III is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actor. He has released twenty-six studio albums, four live albums, and six compilations. Some of his best-known songs include "The Swimming Song", "Motel Blues", "The Man Who Couldn't Cry", "Dead Skunk", and "Lullaby". In 2007, he collaborated with musician Joe Henry to create the soundtrack for Judd Apatow's film Knocked Up. In addition to music, he has acted in small roles in at least eighteen television programs and feature films, including three episodes in the third season of the series M*A*S*H.
Kate McGarrigle and Anna McGarrigle were a duo of Canadian singer-songwriters from Quebec, who performed until Kate McGarrigle's death on January 18, 2010.
Kate & Anna McGarrigle is the debut album by Kate & Anna McGarrigle, released in January 1976. Guest musicians on the album include Lowell George, Bobby Keys, Jay Ungar, and Tony Levin as well as family and friends such as eldest sister Jane McGarrigle, Anna McGarrigle's husband Dane Lanken, and the siblings' old friend Chaim Tannenbaum.
Dancer with Bruised Knees is the second album by Kate & Anna McGarrigle, released in 1977. It was produced by Joe Boyd. The album employed several notable folk musicians to contribute a bluegrass feel to many of the tracks. The album also includes three French songs, one by the McGarrigles with Philippe Tatartcheff, and two traditional numbers. The guest musicians included John Cale, Dane Lanken, Bill Monroe, Dave Mattacks and Pat Donaldson. Dancer with Bruised Knees peaked a No. 35 on the UK Albums Chart.
Matapédia is an album by the Canadian duo Kate & Anna McGarrigle, released in 1996.
Album II is the second album by Loudon Wainwright III. It was released in 1971 by Atlantic Records.
Album III is the third full-length album from Loudon Wainwright III. It was originally released in 1972 on Columbia Records. Album III would spawn Loudon Wainwright's most popular hit single, "Dead Skunk", one of the many 'novelty songs' sprinkled throughout Wainwright's career. Although Wainwright has maintained an ironic, sometimes sepulchral sense of humor, "Dead Skunk", despite its commercial success, has dogged him ever since, as he comments on 1985's album I'm Alright, "Were you embarrassed about 'Dead Skunk'"?
Attempted Mustache is the fourth album from Loudon Wainwright III. It was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee with producer Bob Johnston and was released in 1973 on Columbia Records.
Unrequited is the fifth album from Loudon Wainwright III. It was his last album on the Columbia Records label, released in 1975. Tracks 1–7 were recorded in a studio, while tracks 8–14 were recorded live at The Bottom Line in New York City. Tracks 15–17 are bonus tracks included on the Sony-Legacy CD reissue.
Fame and Wealth is an album by the American musician Loudon Wainwright III, released in 1983.
More Love Songs is a 1986 album by Loudon Wainwright III released on Rounder Records. Wainwright had moved to England, and this was the second album produced by Richard Thompson. Critically and popularly it is probably considered the peak of his 1980s renaissance. After three albums in four years, it would be another three years before he released the largely ignored Therapy. The album was nominated for the "Best Contemporary Folk Recording" Grammy.
Grown Man is an album by the American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, released on October 2, 1995, on Virgin Records. The release is generally considered less stark and somewhat more humorous that its predecessor, History.
Little Ship is an album by the American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, released in 1998 on Virgin Records/Charisma Records. According to Wainwright, the album "focuses primarily on the theme of a relationship. In terms of the other records, I don't know how or why I would place it somewhere except that it's the newest."
Social Studies is a studio album by Loudon Wainwright III, released in 1999. The album comprises various topical and satirical songs, originally produced for National Public Radio and based upon then-current issues and events, such as the Tonya Harding scandal, the O. J. Simpson murder trial, the lead-up to Y2K, and controversies surrounding comments made by former Republican U.S. Senator Jesse Helms.
T Shirt is a 1976 album by Loudon Wainwright III. Unlike his earlier records, this saw Wainwright adopt a full blown rock band (Slowtrain) - though there are acoustic songs on T Shirt, including a talking blues. According to Wainwright on the 2006 CD liner notes, it received a scathing review from Rolling Stone which depressed him so much he stayed in bed for five days. By the early 1990s, he disowned the album in a radio interview broadcast in Australia. However, by the time of the CD remaster he admitted to a much more sympathetic view of the album(s), which he referred to as his 'puppies'.
Final Exam is an album by the American musician Loudon Wainwright III, released in 1978. He supported it with a North American tour. The album was re-released on Telarc in 2007, coupled with his 1976 album, T Shirt. In 1995, Wainwright acknowledged that it was his least favorite of his albums.
Older Than My Old Man Now is the twenty-second studio album by American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, released on April 17, 2012, on 2nd Story Sound Records. Described as "a gleefully morbid summing up of [Wainwright's] life in which he ponders childhood, family history, aging and death," the album is produced by High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project (2009) collaborator Dick Connette, and features contributions from each of Wainwright's children.
Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle is a two-disc compilation tribute album to Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle, released by Nonesuch Records in June 2013.
Songs in the Dark is the debut album by the Wainwright Sisters, a singer-songwriter duo featuring the Canadian-American Martha Wainwright and her American half-sister Lucy Wainwright Roche. The album, released on November 13, 2015, includes lullabies that their mothers Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche sang to them as children, plus songs by Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Rogers, and their father Loudon Wainwright III.
Blue Is the Colour of Hope is an album by the Irish musician Maura O'Connell, released in 1992. She supported the album with a North American tour that included shows with Loudon Wainwright III. The album title comes from a line by J. D. Salinger.
