Album Review: The Blackbird Diaries by Dave Stewart

Recorded during a five-day sprint in Nashville, the Blackbird Diaries offers a rawer portrait of Dave Stewart - the producer, former Eurthymic and current member of Superheavy, with Mick Jagger - than you're likely ever to have heard. The nasty, lurching guitar that announces "So Long Ago," the album's opener, is the tip-off. The song name-checks blues greats Junior Kimbrough, R.L.

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Stalwart producer/songwriter and former Eurythmic Dave Stewart offers up the most atypical record of his career to date with this Nashville-recorded effort. It’s arguably one of the most successfully executed sidesteps in pop music. Featuring guest turns from new NPR darlings the Secret Sisters, plus Stevie Nicks, Martina McBride (John McBride is an associate producer and engineer on the album) and Colbie Caillat, The Blackbird Diaries further cements Stewart’s reputation as an ace writer and performer.

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Though not recording himself, Dave Stewart's been busy for the past 13 years as a producer and songwriter. In 2011 alone he produced albums by Joss Stone and Stevie Nicks. The Blackbird Diaries is his first album of his own material since 1998. It's titled for the Blackbird Studio in Nashville, where the set was recorded; it's owned by Martina and John McBride.

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Dave Stewart (or David A. Stewart, as he is sometimes called) is a wildly creative artist who was largely responsible for some of the best pop music of the 1980s as half of The Eurythmics. While Annie Lennox obviously also played a major role, we wouldn’t have had “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves,” or one of that decade’s best singles to not reach number one, “Would I Lie To You,” without him.

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