Bruised Orange

After Common Sense, Prine signed a three-album deal with Asylum in 1977 and asked his friend Steve Goodman to produce. Earlier sessions in Nashville with Jack Clement had not put the record on tape the way he heard it, and after talking to twenty different producers he said he had no heart to do it again, so Goodman offered. Bruised Orange was recorded and mixed at Chicago Recording Company between January and March 1978. Prine said he put it totally in Goodman's hands and got back a beautiful record.

If You Don't Want My Love was co-written with Phil Spector, who sat down at the piano at four in the morning as Prine was leaving Spector's house. The title song was based on a boy killed by a commuter train near the church where Prine had been an altar boy. Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone tells of the actor Sabu on a promotional tour of Midwest shopping malls in winter, and Prine called it the oddest song he wrote. Jackson Browne and Ramblin' Jack Elliott are among the backing singers on The Hobo Song.

Rolling Stone's Jay Cocks wrote in 1978 that Goodman was likely the best and certainly the most congenial producer Prine had ever had.