Tim is the fourth studio album by American alternative rock band The Replacements. It was released in September 1985 on Sire Records. It was their first major label release and also the last album made by the original line-up of the band: guitarist Bob Stinson was kicked out of the band towards the end of 1986.
Like its predecessors, Tim achieved moderate mainstream commercial success despite critical acclaim. The album peaked at number 183 on the Billboard Top 200. It was placed 136th on Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and 137 in a 2012 revised list.[1] It ranked 4th in the Alternative Press list of the Top 99 albums of 1985–1995.[2] Along with the band's previous album, Let It Be, Tim received five stars from AllMusic. In 2014, the staff of PopMatters included the album on their list of "12 Essential Alternative Rock Albums from the 1980s".[3]
Bob Stinson is the only member of the band whose face is clearly visible on the cover.
The album also contains the song "Bastards of Young," which was given a now-infamous black-and-white video, consisting mostly of a single unbroken shot of a speaker. At the end of the song, the speaker is kicked in by the person who was listening to the song. Similar videos were also made for "Hold My Life" (in color), "Left of the Dial" (minus the speaker-bashing), and "Little Mascara" (also in color).
"Left of the Dial" is a reference to college radio stations, which were usually on the left side of a radio dial.[4][5] Nearly 40 years after the album's release, the song remains popular as a college radio anthem and was ranked 265 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2021;[6] it was ranked 24th in Rolling Stone's 2023 list of "The 200 best songs of the 1980s".
The band performed "Bastards of Young" and "Kiss Me on the Bus" on Saturday Night Live on January 18, 1986. It was the most television exposure the band had received up to that time, but the band's behavior on the show, including swearing during the broadcast, resulted in a lifetime ban from Saturday Night Live. However, Westerberg would later perform on the show as a solo artist.
The song "Here Comes a Regular" was written about south Minneapolis bar CC Club, a frequent hangout for the band across the street from record store Oar Folkjokeopus, an important center for the Minneapolis music scene.[7]
The album was first remastered and reissued by Rhino Entertainment on September 23, 2008 with six additional tracks and liner notes by Peter Jesperson.
Cover for Tim: Let It Bleed Edition
Rhino reissued the album again as Tim: Let It Bleed Edition, on September 22, 2023. The four-disc re-release includes a new mix by Ed Stasium, alternate takes, demos, a live performance at the Cabaret Metro recorded in 1986, and liner notes by Bob Mehr.[8] In total, the box-set includes 65 tracks, 50 of which have never been heard before.[9]
Singer-guitarist Paul Westerberg once cited Tim's stylistic bookends to describe both the longevity of the Replacements' influence and their lack of mainstream success. "My style is ultimately both kinds of things," he said. "Sometimes you just love the little acoustic songs, and other times you want to crank the goddamn amp up, and those two parts of me are forever entwined." That cognitive dissonance – the Stonesesque swagger of "Bastards of Young," the unpolished reflection in "Swingin Party" — became a crucial template for grunge, alternative country and, recently, the noisy introspection of emo.[22]
Pitchfork ranked Tim at number 37 on their list of the Top 100 Albums of the 1980s.[23]Slant Magazine listed the album at number 66 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s".[24]
Reviewing the 2023 Tim: Let It Bleed re-release, Jack Hamilton of Slate called the original album one of the most poorly-mixed of the 1980s, praising Ed Stasium's remix as "a watershed, the rare act of musical revision that refreshes its object in ways that should thrill diehard fans while also serving as a gorgeous welcome 'Mat for listeners experiencing this music for the first time".[25] Jeremy D. Larson of Pitchfork gave the re-release a 10 out of 10 and called it an "unbelievable new remix of Tim that doesn’t just challenge the notion that Let It Be was the Replacements at their peak, but usurps it to become the best and most definitive album in their catalog".[16]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Paul Westerberg, except where noted
^"Left of the Dial". KCRU.org. 2018. Retrieved October 5, 2021. Left of the Dial takes its name from the Replacements song of the same name, and is a reference to the position of the radio dial on which non-commercial radio stations are typically located.
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