Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | (79/100) |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Entertainment Weekly | B+ |
| Pitchfork Media | (6.9/10) |
| PopMatters | |
| Robert Christgau | B |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Slant Magazine | |
| Spin | (9/10) |
| Stylus Magazine | B+ |
| Yahoo! Music UK | |
In 2002, Sea Change was one of only two albums to receive Rolling Stone magazine's highest rating of five stars, the other being Bruce Springsteen's The Rising. The magazine went on to call it the best album of 2002. The next year, the album was ranked number 440 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It was ranked number 17 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 best albums of the 00s.
Sea Change peaked at #8 on Billboard's Top 200 chart and was eventually certified gold in March 2005. In the UK charts, it peaked at #20. As of July 2008, Sea Change has sold 680,000 copies in the United States.
It is said that the album sound concept is inspired by the sound of Serge Gainsbourg's album Histoire de Melody Nelson. Beck would later produce an album for, and record with, Gainsbourg's daughter Charlotte. Critics have also compared the acoustic and relaxed melodies of Sea Change to the works of British singer-songwriter Nick Drake and Bob Dylan's 1975 album Blood on the Tracks.
The album was re-released in a remastered form by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab in June 2009.
Read more about this topic: Sea Change (album)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)