Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Record Collector | (Deluxe 2-Disc Edition) |
Breakfast in America was seen as a departure for the band, with its pop sound deviating from the progressive rock stylings that defined their earlier work. Rolling Stone were receptive to the band's new direction, writing, "Breakfast in America is a textbook-perfect album of post-Beatles, keyboard-centered English art rock that strikes the shrewdest possible balance between quasi-symphonic classicism and rock & roll. Whereas Supertramp's earlier LPs were bogged down by swatches of meandering, Genesis-like esoterica, the songs here are extraordinarily melodic and concisely structured, reflecting these musicians' saturation in American pop since their move to Los Angeles in 1977." "The Logical Song" won the 1979 Ivor Novello Award for "Best Song Musically and Lyrically". Breakfast in America would become Supertramp's most popular album. According to Allmusic, who awarded the album 4.5/5 stars, it had, by the 1990s, sold in excess of 18 million copies worldwide. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, in his review, praised the album's "tightly written, catchy, well-constructed pop songs" and described it as the band's "high-water mark". John Doran of the BBC lauded the "unbeatable quality of the song writing" and opined that "any of the ten tracks could have been hit singles". It has sold well over 20 million copies to date. In a less enthusiastic review, William Pinfold of Record Collector considers the album "a classic example of flawlessly-played and -produced late 70s transatlantic soft rock" and also "a perfect demonstration of why punk had to happen", describing the music as "easily digestible".
In the 1987 edition of the The World Critics List, music critic Joel Whitburn ranked Breakfast in America the fourth greatest album of all time. In the 1994 edition of The Guinness All Time Top 1000 Albums, Breakfast in America was voted #207 in the all-time greatest rock and pop albums, and it was voted the 69th greatest British rock album of all time in a 2006 Classic Rock industry poll. Triple M listeners voted the album #43 in the "100 Greatest Albums of All Time". Recognising the band's disfavour among music critics during their career, Q magazine ranked Breakfast in America second on its "Records it's OK to Love" list in 2006.
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