The fragmentation was furthered when Humberto Gatica was assigned to mix the final version of the album without Nevison's input.

They were on tour … they came in when they needed to do stuff, and you do lose some continuity with that approach, but I don't fault them for that.Although the music for Twenty 1 was considered commercially viable, the shifting of popular musical trends toward the impending grunge movement is said to have lost Chicago some valuable radio support.

[citation needed] Nevison maintains that if his original mixes had been used, he'd have been much happier and the album could have theoretically been more successful: "It all would have worked if they’d left it alone.

39 and Twenty 1 peaked at #66 during its eleven-week period on the charts,[1] making it their second least successful non-greatest hits album, only behind Chicago XIV.

For what was intended to be the band's twenty-second album, Stone of Sisyphus, Chicago hired producer Peter Wolf to develop what could be considered a more ambitious and experimental effort.