[1] After the tepid reviews for his 1975 album Common Sense, Prine was disillusioned with his label, Atlantic Records, who he felt had not promoted the LP as much as they could have.

Prine had done work on the new album with Jack Clement but, as he explained to Paul Zollo of Bluerailroad magazine, "I had made the record already but I didn’t have it.

Prine was introduced to Phil Spector by L.A. Times writer Robert Hillburn and wrote "If You Don't Want My Love" with the producer at his house, recalling to Bluebirdrailroad magazine, "It happened on the way out the door.

It tells the story of Indian actor Sabu who starred in the 1937 film "The Elephant Boy" and the culture shock he experiences on a promotional tour of shopping malls in the American Midwest in the middle of winter.

The album closer, "The Hobo Song," features an array of background vocalists, including Jackson Browne and Ramblin' Jack Elliott.

Writing in Rolling Stone in 1978, Jay Cocks proclaimed that "Steve Goodman is likely the best and certainly the most congenial producer Prine has ever had" and added "No matter when you play it, Bruised Orange carries the chill of Midwest autumn beyond autobiography ... into a kind of personal pop mythology."

The New York Times noted that Prine's gift is "to marry the unpretentious basics of folk musical styles and poetic imagery with an almost bizarrely exaggerated imagination.

"[8] Critic Robert Christgau was cool toward the album in The Village Voice, writing that "...Prine sounds like he's singing us bedtime stories, and while the gently humorous mood is attractive, at times it makes this 'crooked piece of time that we live in' seem as harmless and corny as producer Steve Goodman's background moves...", although he ultimately found Prine's "meaningful nonsense" comparable to and more impressive than Edward Lear's poetry.

[5] In 1993, critic David Fricke wrote in the Great Days anthology liner notes that Bruised Orange is "very much an album about the light at the end of the hurt" and observed that the LP was "the highest form of praise Goodman could have given, a marvel of taut, confessional Prinespeak rendered with a seductive pop-folk intimacy and, on droll boppers like 'Fish And Whistle', a deceptive, whimsical bounce."

AllMusic's William Ruhlman wrote: "Despite some brilliant songs, Prine's followup albums to his stunning debut were uneven until this" and stated that "Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone" was "perhaps the best depiction ever written of life on the road in the entertainment business."

Prine himself remembers the album fondly for Goodman's saving influence, commenting to Bluerailroad, "I totally put it in his hands.

Prine biographer Eddie Huffman calls the album "a spare, acoustic-driven pop-folk rock record that occasionally veered uncomfortably close to Jimmy Buffett-style whimsy, but generally stayed on track.