In 2011, Play Me Backwards was reissued on CD with a bonus disc of 10 previously unreleased tracks, including "The Trouble with the Truth", "Medicine Wheel" and a cover of Bob Dylan's "Seven Curses".[5]
Production
Recorded in Nashville, the album was produced by Wally Wilson and Kenny Greenberg.[6][7] Baez sought out material after being dismayed with the songs pitched to her; she spent 14 months trying to find the right songs.[8][9] The album's first single, "Stones in the Road", for which Baez shot a video, was written by Mary Chapin Carpenter.[10][11][12] "Through Your Hands" was written by John Hiatt.[13] "I'm with You" is about Baez's son, Gabriel.[14]
The Boston Globe called Play Me Backwards "mostly an album of mature, surprisingly percussive folk-pop love songs that marks her finest work since her Diamonds and Rust album of 1975."[18] The Sun-Sentinel wrote that "Baez's erstwhile hyper-quivering soprano thankfully does not flutter so much, and has deepened marvelously with age."[7]
The Chicago Tribune deemed the album "a surprisingly relaxed, rhythmic and modern set that sounds like it could have been recorded by any one of a number of today's folk-and country-flavored pop female singer-songwriters."[19]The Indianapolis Star noted that "Baez's voice sounds as pure as ever."[16]
Track listing
All tracks composed by Joan Baez, Wally Wilson and Kenny Greenberg, except where indicated.
