''A Sailor's Guide to Earth'' is the third studio album by American

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

singer-songwriter

Sturgill Simpson John Sturgill Simpson (born June 8, 1978) is an American country music singer-songwriter and actor. As of February 2022, he has released seven albums as a solo artist. His first two albums, '' High Top Mountain'' and '' Metamodern Sounds in Cou ...

. It was announced on March 3, 2016, with the release of the single "Brace for Impact (Live a Little)". The album was released on April 15, 2016, and won

Best Country Album The Grammy Award for Best Country Album is an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for quality albums in the country music genre. Honors in ...

at the

59th Grammy Awards The 59th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on February 12, 2017. The CBS network broadcast the show live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The ceremony recognized the best recordings, compositions, and artists of the eligibility year, ...

; it was also nominated for

Album of the Year Album of the Year, often abbreviated to AOTY, may refer to: Awards * ARIA Award for Album of the Year, Australia * Brit Award for British Album of the Year, UK * Grammy Award for Album of the Year, US * Juno Award for Album of the Year, CA * Lati ...

Background

Prior to the album's announcement, Simpson stated in an interview with '' GQ'' that "what's next is already finished... Quite honestly, I need about six months at home with my family." On March 3, 2016, Simpson released "Brace for Impact (Live a Little)" on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

and his website; the next day he released the nine-song track list of ''A Sailor's Guide to Earth''. A week later, he published the music video for "Brace for Impact", which was directed by Matt Mahurin and contains the

Grim Reaper Death is frequently imagined as a personified force. In some mythologies, a character known as the Grim Reaper (usually depicted as a berobed skeleton wielding a scythe) causes the victim's death by coming to collect that person's soul. Other b ...

, a hot rod coffin and sailboats. On March 24, 2016, Simpson released his cover of

Nirvana ( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lampRichard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colombo.' ...

's "

In Bloom "In Bloom" is a song by American rock band Nirvana, written by vocalist and guitarist Kurt Cobain. It appears as the second track on the band's second album, ''Nevermind'', released by DGC Records in September 1991. The album version is the seco ...

" along with its music video, also directed by Matt Mahurin. Simpson said, "I wanted to make a very beautiful and pure homage to Kurt obain" Streaming of the album became available on April 7, 2016, on

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

's official website. The song "Oh Sarah" was previously recorded by Simpson's former band Sunday Valley and appeared on their only full-length album, ''To the Wind and On To Heaven'', in 2011.

Reception

''A Sailor's Guide to Earth'' received widespread critical acclaim upon its release. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from

music critic ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of mus ...

s, the album has received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 86, indicating "universal acclaim", based on 19 reviews. The album debuted at No. 3 on the ''Billboard'' 200, and No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart, selling 52,000 copies (55,000 units when tracks and streams are included) in its first week. The album sold a further 13,400 copies in the second week. The album has sold 217,900 copies in the US as of October 2017. Following his Grammy win, Simpson saw a 346% increase in streaming on

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...

Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

*Arthur Cook – cello *Jefferson Crow – piano,

Wurlitzer The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...

*Jonathan Dinklage – violin *

Dan Dugmore Dan Dugmore is an American session musician known primarily for playing the pedal steel guitar Born in 1949, Dugmore was raised in Pasadena, California. Influenced by the Flying Burrito Brothers, he learned to play steel guitar after Flying B ...

–

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...

*Robert Emmett – keyboards, moog synthesizer, organ, synthesizer, background vocals, Wurlitzer *David Ferguson – engineer, mixing *Clark Gayton –

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

*David Guy –

flugelhorn The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B, though some ...

, trumpet *

Ian Hendrickson-Smith Ian Hendrickson-Smith is an American jazz saxophonist. He is best known for being a former member of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings from 2004 to 2010 and playing with The Roots on ''The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon''. Early life Hendrickson-S ...

–

alto saxophone The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B tenor ...

baritone saxophone The baritone saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of instruments, larger (and lower-pitched) than the tenor saxophone, but smaller (and higher-pitched) than the bass. It is the lowest-pitched saxophone in common use - the bass, contra ...

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

*Laur Joamets – electric guitar,

slide guitar Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object (a slide) against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos tha ...

*Whitney LaGrange – violin *Miles Miller – drums, background vocals *Dave Roe – bass guitar *

–

12-string guitar A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...

, acoustic guitar, moog synthesizer, synthesizer, lead vocals, background vocals *Neal Sugarman – tenor saxophone *Dougie Wilkinson –

bagpipes Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, No ...

*Garo Yellin – cello *Ebonie Smith – assistant engineer

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sailors Guide to Earth 2016 albums Sturgill Simpson albums Atlantic Records albums Grammy Award for Best Country Album