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Drowned in Sound	9/10
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Q
The Rolling Stone Album Guide

The Good Son is the sixth album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released in 1990 (see 1990 in music). It was preceded by the release of "The Ship Song" single. A different version of "The Weeping Song" was later also released as a single. After an album as dark and intense as Tender Prey, some fans were disappointed to hear a more relaxed-sounding Nick Cave on this record. The change of mood was due in great deal to Nick Cave falling in love with Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro, and an apparently salutary spell in rehab which purged the despair and squalor of the previous two albums. However, some fans consider this album as a classic that was unfairly judged at the time.

The closing track "Lucy" was resurrected in 1993 as a B-side of "What a Wonderful World", a collaboration of the Bad Seeds and the Pogues' Shane MacGowan.

Cave later said, "I guess The Good Son is some kind of reflection of the way I felt early on in Brazil. I was quite happy there. I was in love and the first year or two was good. The problem I found was ... in order to survive you have to adopt their attitudes towards everything, which are kind of blinkered."

The album was remastered and reissued on March 29, 2010 as a collector's edition CD/DVD set.

All songs written by Cave unless otherwise stated.

"Foi Na Cruz" is based partly upon the traditional Brazilian Protestant hymn of the same title. The title translates roughly as "It Happened on the cross".

"The Good Son" - the opening is based loosely upon the African-American traditional song "Another Man Done Gone". A recording of this traditional song, by Odetta, later appeared on Original Seeds Vol. 1. The lyrics appear, at least in part, to have been influenced by the Cormac McCarthy novel Child of God, with references to a "malign star" and laying down "queer plans" appearing in both, as well as common themes of dislocation and rejection.

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