Sweet Revenge

Arif Mardin produced it, mostly at Quadraphonic Sound Studios in Nashville. Blue Umbrella and Onomatopoeia were cut at Atlantic Studios in New York, and Dear Abby was recorded live at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Prine told Fricke the band version of Dear Abby was stiff and humorless, so they took the live one. Cissy Houston, Deidre Tuck and Judy Clay sing the call-and-response parts of the title track. On the cover he sprawls across the seats of a 1959 Porsche convertible, the first toy he bought with record company money.

Prine said the title song reflected how he felt after a first album with incredible reviews and a second where the critics started to hit him. Mexican Home was partly inspired by his father Bill on the porch in Maywood, and Grandpa Was a Carpenter honors his grandfather Empson Schobie Prine. Of Christmas in Prison he said it was about a person somewhere they do not want to be, and being sentimental he set it at Christmas.

Christgau gave it an A and said Christmas in Prison deserved to be carved on a wooden turkey. Rolling Stone's Tom Nolan called it his best record yet in 1974.