By the mid-1980s, Lovett had already distinguished himself in the burgeoning Texas singer-songwriter scene.

[7] In 1984, he recorded a four-song demo with the help of the Phoenix band J. David Sloan and the Rogues[8] and his music had begun to be distributed by the Fast Folk Musical Magazine[9] Nanci Griffith had recorded Lovett's "If I Were the Man You Wanted" as "If I Were the Woman You Wanted" for her 1984 album, Once in a Very Blue Moon.

91 in Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the 1980s,[10] and both Velvet[11] and the Italian magazine Il Mucchio Selvaggio also listed it as one of the top 100 albums of the decade.

[citation needed] Allmusic compares the album to Steve Earle's Guitar Town, calling it, "one of the most promising and exciting debut albums to come out of Nashville in the 1980s.

"[1] Robert Christgau described Lovett's debut as: "Writes like Guy Clark, only plainer, sings like Jesse Winchester only countrier.