''A Sailor's Guide to Earth'' is the third studio album by American

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson. It was announced on March 3, 2016, with the release of the single "Brace for Impact (Live a Little)". The album was released on April 15, 2016, and won Best Country Album at the

59th Grammy Awards The 59th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on February 12, 2017. The CBS network broadcast the show live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The ceremony recognized the best recordings, compositions, and artists of the eligibility year ...

; it was also nominated for

Album of the Year Album of the Year, often abbreviated to AOTY, may refer to: Awards * ARIA Award for Album of the Year, Australia * Brit Award for British Album of the Year, UK * Grammy Award for Album of the Year, US * Juno Award for Album of the Year, CA * Lati ...

Background

Prior to the album's announcement, Simpson stated in an interview with '' GQ'' that "what's next is already finished... Quite honestly, I need about six months at home with my family." On March 3, 2016, Simpson released "Brace for Impact (Live a Little)" on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

and his website; the next day he released the nine-song track list of ''A Sailor's Guide to Earth''. A week later, he published the music video for "Brace for Impact", which was directed by Matt Mahurin and contains the Grim Reaper, a hot rod coffin and sailboats. On March 24, 2016, Simpson released his cover of

Nirvana ( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lamp Richard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colomb ...

's " In Bloom" along with its music video, also directed by Matt Mahurin. Simpson said, "I wanted to make a very beautiful and pure homage to Kurt obain" Streaming of the album became available on April 7, 2016, on NPR's official website. The song "Oh Sarah" was previously recorded by Simpson's former band Sunday Valley and appeared on their only full-length album, ''To the Wind and On To Heaven'', in 2011.

Reception

''A Sailor's Guide to Earth'' received widespread critical acclaim upon its release. At

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, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from

music critic '' The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of mu ...

s, the album has received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

score of 86, indicating "universal acclaim", based on 19 reviews. The album debuted at No. 3 on the ''Billboard'' 200, and No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart, selling 52,000 copies (55,000 units when tracks and streams are included) in its first week. The album sold a further 13,400 copies in the second week. The album has sold 217,900 copies in the US as of October 2017. Following his Grammy win, Simpson saw a 346% increase in streaming on

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Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

*Arthur Cook – cello *Jefferson Crow – piano,

Wurlitzer The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...

*Jonathan Dinklage – violin * Dan Dugmore –

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all steel guitars, it can ...

*Robert Emmett – keyboards, moog synthesizer, organ, synthesizer, background vocals, Wurlitzer *David Ferguson – engineer, mixing *Clark Gayton –

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...

*David Guy –

flugelhorn The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B, though som ...

, trumpet * Ian Hendrickson-Smith –

alto saxophone The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B t ...

baritone saxophone The baritone saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of instruments, larger (and lower-pitched) than the tenor saxophone, but smaller (and higher-pitched) than the bass. It is the lowest-pitched saxophone in common use - the bass, contrab ...

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while ...

*Laur Joamets – electric guitar,

slide guitar Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object (a slide) against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos t ...

*Whitney LaGrange – violin *Miles Miller – drums, background vocals *Dave Roe – bass guitar * Sturgill Simpson – 12-string guitar, acoustic guitar, moog synthesizer, synthesizer, lead vocals, background vocals *Neal Sugarman – tenor saxophone *Dougie Wilkinson –

bagpipes Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, ...

*Garo Yellin – cello *Ebonie Smith – assistant engineer

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sailors Guide to Earth 2016 albums Sturgill Simpson albums Atlantic Records albums Grammy Award for Best Country Album