| Historian | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Lucy Dacus |
| Cover: | Historian Lucy Dacus.jpg |
| Label: | Matador |
| Prev Title: | No Burden |
| Prev Year: | 2016 |
| Next Title: | Boygenius |
| Next Year: | 2018 |
Historian is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus, released on March 2, 2018, through Matador Records.[1]
Historian was produced by Dacus, Jacob Blizard and Collin Pastore, the same team that produced her debut album, No Burden.[2] Dacus and her band recorded the album over the course of a week in March 2017 in Nashville.[2] [3] She described the album as a song cycle about "living through loss and the inevitable darkness of life, and doing so hopefully and joyfully."[2] Of the title of the album, Dacus explained, "It's me having this impulse to document and capture and create a history of my life and the people that I know ... Because as I'm making this history and capturing these things that I hold dear, those things won't stay."[4]
On December 12, 2017, Dacus formally announced the album, alongside the first single from the album "Night Shift".[5] The second single "Addictions" was released on January 16, 2018.[6]
Historian was met with "universal acclaim" reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 82 based on 20 reviews. Marcy Donelson of AllMusic said of the release: "Ultimately, the forte passages don't encroach on the songwriting, as they underline emotion, but they do, at times, step on Dacus' voice, when she's clouded by high-volume accompaniment or even vocal processing. Thankfully, those moments are brief and rare, allowing her lyrics and expressive sense of melody to shine."
| Publication | Accolade | Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billboard | Top 50 Albums of 2018 – Mid-Year | ||
| Consequence of Sound | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | ||
| Top 100 Albums of the Decade (2010s) | |||
| Noisey | Top 100 Albums of 2018 | ||
| NPR Music | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | ||
| Paste | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | ||
| Top 100 Albums of the Decade (2010s) | |||
| Pitchfork | Top Rock Albums of 2018 | ||
| PopMatters | Top 70 Albums of 2018 | ||
| Rolling Stone | Top 50 Albums of 2018 | ||
| Slate | Best Albums of 2018 | ||
| Under the Radar | Top 100 Albums of 2018 | ||
| Uproxx | Top 50 Albums of 2018 |
Musicians
Production
| Peak position | ||
| UK Album Sales (OCC)[7] | 45 | |
|---|---|---|
| US Folk Albums (Billboard)[8] | 12 | |
| US Top Album Sales (Billboard)[9] | 20 | |
| US Top Tastemaker Albums (Billboard)[10] | 8 |