Fat City (album)

Fat City
Studio album by Shawn Colvin
Released	October 27, 1992
Length	55:34
Label	Columbia
Producer	Larry Klein, John Leventhal, Shawn Colvin, Kenny White, David Kahne
Shawn Colvin chronology
Steady On (1989) Fat City (1992) Cover Girl (1994)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Robert Christgau	(C)[2]
Rolling Stone	[3]

Fat City, Shawn Colvin's second full length album, was released in 1992 on Columbia Records.

The album reached 142 on the Billboard 200 and reached #2 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers.^[4] "Round of Blues" and "I Don't Know Why" made Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and Adult Contemporary single charts, respectively.^[5] "Tenderness on the Block" is a cover version of a song released on Warren Zevon's 1978 album Excitable Boy. Opening track "Polaroids" was performed live by Colvin on the series finale of HBO's The Larry Sanders Show in 1998, and provided the title of her "greatest hits" album, which was released in 2004.

Track listing

1. "Polaroids" (Shawn Colvin) - 5:53
2. "Tennessee" (Colvin, John Leventhal) - 4:21
3. "Tenderness on the Block" (Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon) - 5:05
4. "Round of Blues" (Colvin, Larry Klein) - 4:47
5. "Monopoly" (Colvin) - 4:25
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" (Elly Brown, Colvin) - 7:01
9. "Object of My Affection" (Colvin, Leventhal) - 3:53
10. "Kill the Messenger" (Colvin) - 4:36
11. "I Don't Know Why" (Colvin) - 4:37

Personnel

• Shawn Colvin – guitar, vocals
• Bruce Hornsby – piano, background vocals
• David Lindley – Hawaiian guitar, bazouki, lap steel Guitar
• Joni Mitchell – percussion
• The Subdudes – vocals
• Richard Thompson – guitar
• Chris Whitley – National Steel guitar (8)
• Tommy Malone – guitar, background vocals
• Valerie Carter – background vocals
• Jim Keltner – drums
• Alex Acuña – percussion
• Steve Amedee – drums, background vocals
• Robin Batteau – background vocals
• Larry Campbell – fiddle, pedal steel
• Mary Chapin Carpenter – background vocals
• Vinnie Colaiuta – drums
• Denny Fongheiser – drums
• Béla Fleck – banjo
• Milt Grayson – background vocals
• Richard Hayward – drum brushes
• Curtis King – background vocals
• Larry Klein – bass, percussion, guitar, keyboards, drum programming
• Greg Leisz – pedal steel
• John Leventhal – guitar, bass, percussion
• John Magnie – accordion, background vocals
• Bill Payne – organ
• Jeff Pevar – guitar
• Steuart Smith – guitar
• Fonzi Thornton – background vocals
• Ken White – keyboards, background vocals
• Vinnie Zummo – guitar
• Johnny Ray Allen – bass
• Booker T. Jones III – Hammond organ

Songwriting

In an interview with Performing Songwriter magazine, Colvin described how she co-wrote songs for Fat City:^[6]

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 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.

References

1. Allmusic review
2. Robert Christgau review
3. D'Erasmo, Stacey. "Album Review: Shawn Colvin - Fat City". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 9 July 2008. Retrieved 18 November 2015.
4. Billboard album milestones from Allmusic
5. Billboard singles milestones from Allmusic
6. Born to be Telling her Story, from Performing Songwriter magazine via taxi.com, an A&R company