A special feature of Norman High’s newspaper is the Album of the Week section, spanning many artists and genres throughout the entire school year. This section is just a simple but fun addition to the newspaper every week.
And without further ado, here’s the very first album of the week for the 2025-2026 school year.
Grace
Released on August 23, 1994, and being the only studio album of its respective artist, Grace was Jeff Buckley’s entry ticket into the music scene. It was unfortunately slow to gain traction after its release; Grace had ranked #194 on the U.S Billboard 200 and #31 on the UK Albums Chart in 1994. Unfortunately, Grace never had anywhere near the amount of publicity in ‘94 as it did following Buckley’s untimely death on May 29, 1997.
Record sales during Buckley’s lifetime aren’t available, but due to his popularity, his sales didn’t particularly satisfy Columbia Records’ initial expectations. In his lifetime, Buckley held many concerts, particularly in the U.S.A., performing approximately 188 from 1990 to 1997. In the earlier years of his performances, Buckley had performed covers of various songs in cafes and venues in New York City, including the Sin-é cafe. Around the middle years of his musical career, he had toured both with and without a band from early 1994 to 1996, with his tour going through North America and Europe; Eventually, in 1997, Buckley had shifted to weekly performances in Memphis, with his final concert being on May 26, 1997, just 3 days before his death.
Fit into three genre subcategories of rock, of which being Alternative Rock, Folk-Rock, and Jazz-Rock, Grace has earned itself a great reputation from music critics and fans from all over the world. With a critic score of 90 and a user score of 92 on Album of the Year, Grace was marked as a “Must hear album”, and based on albums that were released in 1994, Grace ranked 21st out of 149 for critics, and 2nd for typical users. Of all time, there’s only user data, with Grace ranking 12th of every single album on the platform. Grace has also ranked 147 out of 500 on The Rolling Stones’ top 500 albums of all time.
Initially running at 51:48 with only 10 tracks, Grace had multiple reissues as years passed, with songs like ‘Forget Her’ being added posthumously due to the fact that his record company couldn’t convince him to release them. Buckley claimed that ‘Forget Her‘ was too personal and raw for public release, and also revealed his true emotions about the situation he had written it for, which could make the person it was written about possibly uncomfortable. The company had violated those beliefs and published the song as a bonus disc on the 2004 Legacy Edition of the album. Alongside his original work, Grace includes multiple covers, like Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah‘ and James Shelton’s ‘Lilac Wine‘.
Grace’s popularity rose over the years, not just from radio stations and physical media, but from social media and younger generations as well. One of the songs, ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’, is his #1 song currently on Spotify, and has been trending for the past few months on apps like TikTok and Instagram. A few of his other original songs, like ‘Last Goodbye’ and ‘Forget Her’, have also risen to popularity through these apps.
Overall, Grace is a critically acclaimed ‘masterpiece’, with most listening experiences impacting the listener deeply with how emotional and raw Buckley’s music is. Over the years, Buckley’s popularity has gone from not being enough for Columbia’s sales expectations to selling over 2 million copies worldwide, with most of the sales being posthumous. Buckley’s music is not only sweet, somber, and “yearning”, but also bright, joyful, and hopeful. His music is streamed worldwide, to millions of people at a time, uniting them all in its own special way.
That’s all for Album of the Week #1.
Grace track listing (Including ‘Forget Her’)
- ‘Mojo Pin ‘ – 5:42
- ‘Grace ‘ – 5:22
- ‘Last Goodbye ‘ – 4:35
- ‘Lilac Wine ‘ – 4:32
- ‘So Real ‘ – 4:43
- ‘Hallelujah ‘* – 6:53
- ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over ‘* – 6:44
- ‘Corpus Christi Carol ‘ – 2:56
- ‘Eternal Life ‘ – 4:52
- ‘Dream Brother ‘ – 5:26
- ‘Forget Her ‘* – 5:12
Total Run Time: 57:03
* – Top three in album (according to popularity)
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