The Way It Is (1986)

Si Twining

This is how you scored The Way It Is. We’ll be asking you to score all of Bruce Hornsby’s records as time passes…

Once we get all the voting in for every record, we’ll compare every record and track to see how they fare.

A reminder, if you needed it, of the tracks:

Music player

These make for some interesting figures. No great surprise which track scored highest, although Mandolin Rain ran The Way It Is close. Interesting that it scored so highly for longevity,. since Bruce himself says he’s unable to listen back to the early recordings. It’s fair to say, though, that the live versions (as with any great band) beat the studio version, and so a number of the early songs from this 1986 release still make the setlists almost 30 years later.

It’ll be fun to see how the collaborations and personnel compare with the post-Range records. The only guest of note on this release was Huey Lewis, who provided harmonica and vocals on Down the Road Tonight.

Liner notes consisted of lyrics and credits, and garnered the lowest of the incidental ratings. Let’s see how they compare with subsequent releases!

The percentages below are based on your marks out of ten. So where On the Western Skyline has a percentage score of 77.3, it means you scored it an average of 7.73 out of 10.

The Way It Is - the breakdown

On the Western Skyline - 77.3%
Every Little Kiss - 85%
Mandolin Rain - 89.6%
The Long Race - 69.7%
The Way It Is - 92.9%
Down the Road Tonight - 77%
The Wild Frontier - 67.3%
The River Runs Low - 79%
The Red Plains - 76.9%
SHELF-LIFE/LONGEVITY - 89.6%
LYRICS - 89.1%
ARTWORK/LINER NOTES - 72.7%
MUSICALITY - 92.5%
PRODUCTION - 84.6%
COLLABORATIONS - 84.4%

82%

Very good!

Bruce's debut record nets a healthy score from the Bruuuce.com community!