Rhino / Wea
2005
Besterberg: The Best Of Paul Westerberg
About This Album
The Replacements were touted as the Next Big Thing for so long that when leader Paul Westerberg struck out for a solo career in 1992, that same sense of expectation carried over to the new phase of his career. Of course, 1992 was a very different time from 1984, when the 'Mats released their breakthrough Let It Be, or even 1989, when the heavily scrubbed and polished Don't Tell a Soul represented a last-ditch attempt for crossover success for the band. In 1992, the doors to commercial mass acceptance for alternative rock had finally been broken down -- the very thing that many critics and pundits predicted that the Replacements would do. Nirvana opened the floodgates with Nevermind, and the climate of rock music changed considerably, just around the time that Westerberg was turning away from the rowdy rock & roll that had made his reputation and turning toward classic singer/songwriter-styled material. In the thick of the post-Nirvana fallout, Westerberg released the light, incessantly catchy "Dyslexic Heart" as his first single -- a song that he calls "a bit too cutesy for me" in the liner notes to the 2005 retrospective Besterberg, but the damage had already been done, since the single, and its association with Cameron Crowe's Seattle-glorifying slacker romantic comedy Singles, pegged Westerberg as being a little bit too desperate for crossover success.
Track List (try tracks 1,3,5,7 and 17)

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