| Pain Makes You Beautiful | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | The Judybats |
| Cover: | Pain Makes You Beautiful.jpg |
| Border: | yes |
| Released: | 1993 |
| Recorded: | Long View Farm Studios, North Brookfield, Massachusetts[1] |
| Genre: | Pop, rock, alternative rock |
| Length: | 44:06 |
| Label: | Sire/Warner Bros. |
| Producer: | Kevin Moloney |
| Prev Title: | Down in the Shacks Where the Satellite Dishes Grow |
| Prev Year: | 1992 |
| Next Title: | Full-Empty |
| Next Year: | 1994 |
Pain Makes You Beautiful is the third album by the American band the Judybats, released in 1993 by Sire Records.[2] [3] The album contains the band's most successful single, "Being Simple", which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.[4] The band supported the album with a North American tour.[5]
Pain Makes You Beautiful saw a significant lineup change for the band, with the departure of keyboardist Peggy Hambright and bassist Timothy Stutz and the arrival of bassist Paul Noe and drummer Dave Kenkins.[6] [7] Recorded live in the studio, the album was produced by Kevin Moloney,[8] [9] who helped the band to shorten and rearrange their songs.[10] The recording studio, Long View Farm Studios, was a country barn, built above horse stables.[11] Many of the songs' lyrics were inspired by the lives of frontman Jeff Heiskell and his friends.[12]
In 2023, Heiskell stated that he loved Moloney's production on the album, which introduced more "organic sounds", and added that he felt the band's earlier records had been overproduced by comparison.[11]
Trouser Press stated that "the musicianship is at a consistently high caliber, and the songwriting is tremendously diverse."[7] The Chicago Tribune concluded that "Heiskell, a dominant vocal presence live, is still too mannered on record; he's like a drawling male Annie Lennox, with every intonation sounding studied and self-conscious." The Republican wrote: "Flying in the face of grunge trends, they pack a rippling batch of melodies into crisp pop tracks like the exhilarating 'Ugly on the Outside'." The Washington Post determined that "the Judybats slip loose of their New South neo-folk-rock mold, though not singer/lyricist Jeff Heiskell's sometimes annoying conceits."[13] The Associated Press deemed the album "lightweight pop ... overloaded with ponderous pretensions."[14]
In a retrospective review, Stewart Mason of AllMusic thought the album traded the band's "folky eccentricities" for "a more identifiably alternative rock groove that's considerably less unique", and that Moloney "steers things a little too far to adult album alternative territory at times".[6]
All music by the Judybats, lyrics by Jeff Heiskell.
The Judybats
Technical