1989 Atlantic interview

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by David

I hate this album. I have always hated this album. The engineering is the worst of any Nicks project from 1981 to the present. Everything about the album screams trash and vulgarity — even the hand-tinting of the cover photograph. I’m amazed at the glowing response the album gets from the fan base. It’s Stevie’s fairy album, they’ve been saying for years. People actually like the trashy keyboards and shlocky sounds. I would call it adult contemporary, except that it never sounded contemporary and didn’t remotely pass as adult.

The handful of good songs are destroyed by the band, the singing, and the production. I remember buying the cassette single of the first single, popping it into the car player, and my face just sunk with disappointment. It sounded like shlockmeister Laura Branigan, only Laura had the sense to put out her album five years earlier. Mirror is an album for kiddies who always loved Olivia Newton-John and Richard Marx. Oh, and Debbie Gibson — although even her albums were better produced.

In 1989, there was Full Moon Fever and Like a Prayer and Rhythm Nation and End of the Innocence and Mother’s Milk and Nick of Time and Don’t Tell a Soul and Seeds of Love and Automatic ... and this?! I think I’m in kind of a sour mood today.

I don't disagree with much of what you say. But I had the same reaction to RAL. Maybe the excitement of waiting almost 3 years had my expectations too high. Because of how bad RAL was my expectations were grounded. I also bought the cassette and listened on my way home. I thought it was so much better than RAL. Real drums and real instruments and her voice was not fried. IMHO Rooms on Fire, Long Way To Go, Ooh My Love, and Doing The Best That I can is better than any song on RAL.
I do not think this album has much love in the fan base. IMHO RAL seems to have much more love than this one which confuses me. RAL is hardly Stevie. OSOTM is totally rambling Stevie telling deeply personal stories of staying up all night, falling in love, doing cocaine, escaping from rehab, and telling off ex boyfriends. It does not get more Stevie than that.