Reception
The album includes many of The Band's best-known and critically acclaimed songs, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", which Rolling Stone named the 245th greatest song of all time (in the updated version, it was the 249th greatest song of all time). In 2003, the album was ranked number 45 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted The Band the 76th greatest album of all time. TIME magazine included it in their unranked 2006 list of the 100 greatest albums. Robert Christgau, having been disappointed with their debut, had expected to dislike the record, and even planned a column for The Village Voice to castigate their followup. Upon hearing the record, however, he declared it better than Abbey Road, which had been released four days following, writing The Band's LP is an "A-plus record if I've ever rated one."
The Band peaked at #9 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. In 2000, it recharted on Billboard's Internet Albums chart, peaking at #10. The singles "Rag Mama Rag" and "Up on Cripple Creek" peaked on the Pop Singles chart at #57 and #25 respectively.
Album - Billboard (North America)
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1970 | Pop Albums | 9 |
| 2000 | Top Internet Albums | 10 |
Singles - Billboard (North America)
| Year | Single | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | "Rag Mama Rag" | Pop Singles | 57 |
| 1970 | "Up on Cripple Creek" | Pop Singles | 25 |
In 2009, the album was preserved into the National Recording Registry because the album was "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or informs or reflects life in the United States."
Read more about this topic: The Band (album)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)