Hotel California is the fifth studio album by American rock band Eagles, released on December 8, 1976, by Asylum Records.

Three singles were released from the album, with the title track and "New Kid in Town" topping the Billboard Hot 100 and "Life in the Fast Lane" reaching No.

It has been certified 26× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the US, and has sold over 32 million units worldwide, making it the band's second best-selling album after Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) (1976).

[4] Don Henley said of the themes of the songs in the album: They're the same themes that run through all of our work: loss of innocence, the cost of naiveté, the perils of fame, of excess; exploration of the dark underbelly of the American dream, idealism realized and idealism thwarted, illusion versus reality, the difficulties of balancing loving relationships and work, trying to square the conflicting relationship between business and art; the corruption in politics, the fading away of the Sixties dream of "peace, love and understanding.

"[4]On the title "Hotel California", Henley said that "the word, 'California,' carries with it all kinds of connotations, powerful imagery, mystique, etc., that fires the imaginations of people in all corners of the globe.

Leadon was replaced by Joe Walsh who provided the opening guitar riff of "Life in the Fast Lane" that was then developed into the song.

The title for "Life in the Fast Lane" was inspired by a conversation between Frey and his drug dealer during a high speed car ride.

[7] Parts of the lyrics of "Hotel California" as well as the song "Wasted Time" were based on Henley's break up with his then girlfriend Loree Rodkin.

The band was forced to stop recording on numerous occasions because Black Sabbath were too loud and the sound was coming through the wall.

[2] In contrast, "Victim of Love" was recorded in a live session in studio apart from the lead vocal and the harmony on the choruses which were added later.

"[13] The front cover artwork is a photograph of The Beverly Hills Hotel shot just before sunset by David Alexander with design and art direction by Kosh.

[18] Kosh designed a Hotel California logo as a neon sign which was used on the album cover and in its promotional materials.

On August 17, 2011, the album was released on a hybrid SACD in Japan in The Warner Premium Sound series, containing both a stereo and a 5.1 mix.

These also had text engraved in the run-out groove of each side, continuing an in-joke trend the band had started with their third album On the Border.

[33] Both critics picked up on the album's California themes – Christgau remarking that while it may in places be "pretentious and condescending" and that "Don Henley is incapable of conveying a mental state as complex as self-criticism", the band couldn't have written the songs on side one "without caring about their California theme down deep";[25] Walters in contrast felt the "lyrics present a convincing and unflattering portrait of the milieu itself", and that Don Henley's vocals express well "the weary disgust of a victim (or observer) of the region's luxurious excess".

[33] Billboard gave the album high praise: "The casually beautiful, quietly-intense multileveled vocal harmonies and brilliant original songs that meld solid emotional words with lovely melody lines are all back in force, keeping the Eagles at the acme of acoustic electric soft rock."

Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times, writing after the band broke up, called the album "a legitimate rock masterpiece", in which the band "examined their recurring theme about the American Dream with more precision, power and daring than ever in such stark, uncompromising songs as "Hotel California" and "The Last Resort".

"[23] Steve Holtje, writing for CultureCatch in 2012, felt that even though "an awful lot of the album is snarky whining from co-leaders Don Henley and Glenn Frey, two guys who didn't really seem like they had that much they could legitimately complain about", in the final analysis "Hotel California and the underrated concept album Desperado stand as the group's greatest statements".

[37] Ultimate Classic Rock critic Sterling Whitaker rated both "Wasted Time" and "The Last Resort" as being among the Eagles' 10 most underrated songs.

Hotel California was ranked 13th in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.

[57] The album produced two number one hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100: "New Kid in Town", on February 26, 1977, and "Hotel California" on May 7, 1977.

Prosecutors alleged that they had forged provenance documents attempting to demonstrate that they were the lawful owners of some of Frey and Henley's original drafts of lyrics for songs on the album, including "Hotel California" and "Life in the Fast Lane" and "New Kid in Town", when they in fact knew those materials, around a hundred handwritten pages on yellow notebook paper estimated to be worth $1 million in total, to have been stolen.

[62][63] The three were alleged to have acquired the documents from Ed Sanders, a journalist who had been hired to write a biography of the band around the time of Hotel California.

The Los Angeles Times found also[63] that an archived version of the 2016 Sotheby's listing online identified Sanders as the then-owner.