Songs For A Tailor - Reception

Reception

The album was generally successful, reaching #6 on the UK Albums Chart and #55 on the Billboard "Pop Albums" chart. It did not reach the sales levels of Bruce's work with Cream, the later albums of which consistently broke the top 10 of the Billboard "Pop Albums" charts before their dissolution, but, as of 2002, it was the most successful album of his solo career. Largely acclaimed, particularly in England, the album proved influential, described in 2001 by BBC as a "seminal" work. However, reviews were not universally positive, with critical opinion particularly divided on the album's lyrics, penned by long-term Bruce collaborator Pete Brown.

Ed Leimbacher, reviewing the album in 1969 for Rolling Stone, called Songs for a Tailor a "disappointment", panning it overall as "a patchwork affair lacking in any unifying thread, a baggy misfit made up of a shopworn miscellany of jazz riffs, rock underpinnings, chamber music strings, boringly baroque lyrics and a Bruce bass that ... everything distinctly bottom heavy." However, later writings in the same magazine characterized it very differently. In 1971, Loyd Grossman termed it " stunning recording with more than an ample amount of beautiful songs and excellent singing and playing". In 1975, he opined that "Bruce's first album, Songs for a Tailor, was so outstanding that his other albums almost always suffer by comparison." In 1989, Rolling Stone writer David Fricke, though noting that Bruce could "flirt with self-indulgence in the pursuit of the unconventional", described the artist's solo output as "highly underrated". In its review, Allmusic summarizes the album as "picture perfect in construction, performance, and presentation."