Now by Maxwell

Now is the third studio album by American R&B and neo soul musician Maxwell, released August 14, 2001 on Columbia Records in the United States. Following the lukewarm radio success of his previous album Embrya (1998), Maxwell felt more comfortable with his artistic direction for Now, which does not exhibit his previous work's conceptual style. The album sold over 296,000 units in the U.S. in the first week, according to SoundScan, to earn him his first-ever number one album. Now's second single "This Woman's Work", a live staple of Maxwell's, charted at number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number 16 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. Despite some negative criticism towards Maxwell's songwriting, Now received generally positive reviews from music critics, based on an aggregate score of 78/100 from Metacritic. The album serves as Maxwell's last release before an eight-year hiatus, which culminated in the release of his fourth studio album, BLACKsummers'night (2009).[18Review Maxwell is a gifted record-maker, which isn't necessarily the same thing as a gifted songwriter. He has a nice, sweet voice, a healthy love for classic soul from Marvin to Prince, an appealing arty streak largely missing from contemporary R&B, and he can arrange his self-recorded productions quite alluringly, balancing the guitars, synths, drum machines, and horns nimbly, often coming up with fresh songs. If only his songs were as memorable as his sounds! True, Now is more song-centric than his previous releases, barring possibly his debut, but this is still well-crafted mood music in which the overall seductive sound matters more than what he's saying specifically. That's part of the reason why his cover of Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" (revived here after being debuted on his MTV Unplugged) is so startling -- it's not just that he's picked an unlikely source for a great cover, but it's the one time that he marries his sumptuous sound to a song with substance. That's not to say that Now is a bad record -- it's hard to call anything that sounds this good a bad album -- but it's held back by Maxwell's emphasis on sound over song. If he were just making mood music, that would be acceptable, but he's trying to live up to the tradition of Marvin and Prince, and while his productions often live up to that legacy, he has yet to write songs memorable enough to truly justify those comparisons. ℗ 2001 Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment