[9][10][11] Lovett won the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for the album.

[12] Lovett's cover of Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man" was later included in the soundtrack of the 1992 movie The Crying Game.

Robert Christgau called the album "very humorous," writing that "after kicking off with a sharp r&b instrumental, the lapsed grad student dispenses with pretension and boils country down to the basics.

"[5] Trouser Press wrote: "In rock’n’roll’s 40 disreputable years only Randy Newman has produced such adult music, or brought such irreproachable aesthetics to the task of charting moral sleight of hand.

"[13] The New Yorker wrote that "Lovett reveals his weird splendor in a schizophrenic jumble of smoky jazz and twangy country that revives whole swaths of neglected popular American music.