"What I wanted this time out was a combination of the music I've been listening to recently," Raitt said in 1982, "Billy Burnette, the Blasters, Rockpile, and the rock-a-billy New Wave scene.

I knew I had to get away from the slick sound I had with the Peter Asher record...I was a little stung by the lack of response to The Glow.

Moving to Shangri-la, I wanted to get back to the roots and to the funkiness I had on earlier records, even though I'm not crazy about how they sound.

Green Light earned Raitt her strongest reviews in years, with critic Robert Christgau writing that "on The Glow the present-day female interpreter refused to die, and now she does even better by the suspect notion of good ol' you-know-what.

The strength of [Green Light] runs too deep to rise up and grab you all at once, so you might begin with "Me and the Boys", arch as usual from NRBQ but formally advanced pull-out-the-stops (with all postfeminist peculiarities accounted for) when Bonnie and the boys get down on it."