Pop / Singer-songwriter pop · 1979
Rickie Lee Jones
Rickie Lee Jones
Why listen
Conversational bursts and sustained melodic lines let one singer create several different kinds of presence.
Listen and read
Tracks · previews
English editorial edition
Album story
A phrase can hurry, hesitate or hang in the air while the band keeps its footing. Rickie Lee Jones makes those small shifts of timing into character on her debut. The brisk address of Chuck E.’s In Love and the sustained lines of Company invite different kinds of attention; neither tells you everything this singer can do.
Released by Warner Bros. in 1979, the album was produced by Russ Titelman and Lenny Waronker. Jones’s official album page also credits her with instrumental contributions and horn arrangements, placing her inside the construction of the music rather than simply in front of it. Authorship is not entirely solitary: Company and Weasel and the White Boys Cool were written with Alfred Johnson.
The sequence builds its own surroundings
The Last Chance Texaco closes the first LP side before Danny’s All-Star Joint opens another stretch of movement. Coolsville and Weasel and the White Boys Cool eventually lead to Company. Do not divide everything too neatly into lively songs and sad ones. A bustling performance can hold a hesitation, while a long melody can deliver a word with force. Keeping the sequence intact lets one manner of singing change the entrance to the next.
A changing stride
On Saturday Afternoons In 1963 and Night Train quickly complicate the impression left by the opening hit. Listen to the difference between throwing out a short word and sustaining a vowel. A continuing beat can feel wider or narrower depending on the vocal gesture above it. When Young Blood and Easy Money arrive, follow the speed of an address as well as the people or situations the songs evoke.
Characters without a biography test
You need not identify every figure as a real friend or treat every narrator as Jones herself. The intimacy of a voice and the factual record of a life are different kinds of evidence. This eleven-track reference follows the official LP programme and closes with After Hours. Let the hit introduce the singer, then allow the remaining songs to alter the distance from which she seems to speak.
The album through its tracks
Compare the clipped address of the opening song with Company’s longer lines, then hear how the intervening sequence changes the approach.
Chuck E.'s In Love
The voice throws out a brief phrase and steps aside while the accompaniment keeps moving. Follow the hook once, then choose a sentence and notice where the words hurry or pause. Jones’s official credits list her as the writer of this opening track. You do not need a story about the real person behind its title to begin enjoying the relationship between speech and rhythm. Compare an emphatically delivered syllable with one that slips past more lightly, listening to what remains steady underneath. The apparent freedom of the voice becomes clearer against that foundation. Continuing directly to the next song prevents this first impression from becoming the whole album.
Reference · Rickie Lee Jones official album page: release, producers and writing creditsCompany
After the busier songs, allow a sentence to stay in the air. A sustained melodic line can make the wait for the next word part of the tension. The official album page credits Jones and Alfred Johnson as co-writers, and the sequence places the song immediately before the closing track. Rather than equating its speaker with the singer’s private life, compare a forceful entrance with a phrase allowed to soften at its end. Slow movement need not mean unchanging intensity. Hear it between Weasel and the White Boys Cool and After Hours to notice how its lingering presence prepares the album’s departure as well as standing on its own.
Reference · Rickie Lee Jones official album page: release, producers and writing credits
Listen next
Billy Joel’s 52nd Street offers another arrangement of characters, urban scenes and flexible rhythm within a pop album.
52nd Street ↗References & editorial note
Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.