RS500 #492: Bonnie Raitt — Nick of Time

Year Released: 1989

Have I heard this before?: I first heard this in 2004, when I went through the original Rolling Stone list (it placed #230 back then), and I absolutely hated it. I’ve attempted to go back to this record twice since then, and my opinion hasn’t changed much.

High Points: I’m trying to find the positives here, even in music I don’t like, so I will say this: Bonnie Raitt is an incredibly talented musician. She can play a mean blues guitar, and her voice is great. Honestly, the best moments on Nick of Time are when the band gets out of the way and lets Bonnie do her thing. On her spare renditions of “Nobody’s Girl” and “I Ain’t Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again,” you get a sense of Raitt at her best.

Low Points: Unfortunately, Don goddamn Was refuses to leave well enough alone and turns most of Nick of Time into a mediocre, overproduced mess. Between the flimsy drums and guitars so smooth that they might as well be samples, the album goes down like the most watered-down highball. Raitt’s at her best when she plays raw, expressive blues, and Was gives her bluesier songs the Jeff Lynne treatment. What’s worse are the low-key funk songs that rely on heavily reverbed, clean guitars that somehow sap Raitt’s songs of any groove they may have had.

Loose Thoughts: I’m a little surprised that people still go to bat for this album, honestly. Sonically, it’s very much of its time, and while the album itself sold well initially, it didn’t have any hits that classic rock and soft rock radio would have played into oblivion by now. Then again, Rolling Stone was always one of Raitt’s biggest cheerleaders, so if anyone was going to continue to hold a candle for Bonnie, it was them.

Rating: I have to give this a Meh, which is an improvement given what I thought of the album upon hearing it for the first time. Even its better moments only sort of work for me; the rest of the album feels sucked of any life and livelihood, a facsimile of blues-rock without any of the humanity that makes people feel things.