| Music for Cougars | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Sugar Ray |
| Cover: | Sugar-ray-music-for-cougars-2009.jpg |
| Released: | July 21, 2009 |
| Recorded: | September 2008–March 2009 |
| Studio: | Pulse Recording Studios (Silver Lake, California) |
| Genre: | Pop rock |
| Length: | 42:04 |
| Label: | Pulse Recordings |
| Producer: | Josh Abraham, Steve Fox, Stan Frazier, Tim Pagnotta, S*A*M and Sluggo, Luke Walker |
| Prev Title: | The Best of Sugar Ray |
| Prev Year: | 2005 |
| Next Title: | Little Yachty |
| Next Year: | 2019 |
Music for Cougars is Sugar Ray's sixth studio album, released in 2009. This was the last album to feature turntablist Craig "DJ Homicide" Bullock, bassist Murphy Karges and drummer Stan Frazier before their departures in August 2010 and early 2012, respectively.
Singer Mark McGrath told Rolling Stone in 2009 that the title was a reference to the band's predominantly female fanbase, and that he became inspired to use it after a friend of his brought it up. He said, "we were playing at the Grove [mall] here in Hollywood, a funny gig on a Sunday, people walking by with strollers. And a friend of ours goes, 'All your fans are cougars'. That’s fucking brilliant." McGrath added that, "to me 'cougars' is an empowering word. It’s like role reversal. Cougars are proud, they take care of themselves and they know what they want."[1]
The album was not as successful commercially as previous Sugar Ray albums. It reached number eighty on the Billboard 200 chart, with none of the album's three singles charting. Shortly before the album's release, McGrath told the New York Post that "there are no commercial concerns for Sugar Ray now. Sure we'd love to sell a million records, who wouldn't? But look, when a U2 record and a Guns N' Roses record both [recently] fail commercially, it’s far from us to think we can sell millions."[2]
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave the album three-and-half out of five stars. He noted its heavy usage of autotune, and wrote "they make no bones about making Music for Cougars, those cougars being the very girls that shook their hips to 'Fly' back in 1997 and are looking for a little bit of the same breezy vibe 12 years later, a little bit of sexy nostalgia to get them through their summer, a soundtrack to a few girls' nights out." Billboard claimed in 2009 that it "marks a return to the tried-and-true formula that made 1997's 'Fly' a radio staple."[3]