Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Billboard | positive |
| Blender | |
| The Guardian | |
| Paste | |
| Pitchfork Media | (6.6/10) |
| PopMatters | positive |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Spin | |
| Sputnikmusic | |
| Stylus | A |
| Uncut | |
| Village Voice | positive |
In its debut week, A Ghost Is Born peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200 chart and sold over 81,000 copies, the highest US chart peak and best sales week ever attained by the band at that time. As of April 13, 2007 the album has sold over 340,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album was an international hit as well, peaking at #24 in Norway, #29 in Sweden, #33 in New Zealand, #34 in Belgium, and #37 in Ireland.
Like Foxtrot, A Ghost Is Born was well received by critics. Jon Pareles of Rolling Stone called the album "as eerie as anything Wilco have recorded yet" and applauded "Tweedy offers illuminating curiosity about what can happen in a song." Stylus Magazine gave it an "A" grade, named it "album of the week", and claimed it was "even more brilliant" than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Michael Metevier of PopMatters also supported the notion that Ghost was better than Foxtrot, calling every note "purposeful" and said that the album made him "surprised and delighted enough to last several lifetimes." In 2005, A Ghost Is Born won two Grammy Awards for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Recording Package. Although the band was nominated for Grammys for work on previous albums, this was the first time that they won one.
Not all publications shared these views about the album. Pitchfork Media, who had given Yankee Hotel Foxtrot a perfect 10 rating, only gave Ghost a 6.6, calling it "wildly uneven" and "less cohesive than any other Wilco release." Robert Christgau, one of the few detractors of Foxtrot, called the album a "privileged self-indulgence" due to its extreme musical dynamics.
Read more about this topic: A Ghost Is Born
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)