[9] That record had been followed by an extensive concert tour after which bassist Michael Steele left the group, and a lengthy period of readjustment ensued.

[10] The album's name comes from the song "Anna Lee (Sweetheart of the Sun)", which was inspired by the book Girls Like Us (2009) by Sheila Weller.

The triple biography tells the intertwined stories of the Laurel Canyon-based singer-songwriters Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon.

The song's opening lines – "Got a picture of you sittin', In the kitchen without a stitch on, Beautiful and natural as can be" – were inspired by a particular passage in the book.

We just decided to use those images and some of those stories that we got from the Sheila Weller book to kind of make this composite character that we ended up naming Anna Lee.

[9] The album's two cover songs date back even farther, to the 1960s: "Sweet and Tender Romance" is a reworking of a 1964 single by the UK girl group the McKinleys, itself a cover of the 1963 single[12] by Carter-Lewis and the Southerners; while "Open My Eyes" comes from Todd Rundgren's early psychedelic band, the Nazz.

They didn't chart in any major charts, and an acoustic studio version of "Hazy Shade of Winter" and "Let It Go" were included on the 7-inch single of "Anna Lee (Sweetheart of the Sun)" The album was seen by many critics as a successful reinvention of the Bangles' early musical style – "a beautifully sustained salute to 1960s-inspired pop".

[5] Writing in The New York Times, music critic Jon Caramanica remarked that much of the album feels "like mature takes on youthful ideas" and harkens back to the Bangles EP of 1982 and the band's earliest days.