Diamonds & Dirt is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell, released in 1988. His fifth studio album, it was his second release for Columbia Records. The album was his most successful, achieving RIAA gold certification. All five of its singles reached Number One on the Billboard country charts, setting a record for the most Number One hits from a country album. In order of release, they were "It's Such a Small World" (a duet with then-wife Rosanne Cash), "I Couldn't Leave You If I Tried", "She's Crazy for Leavin", "After All This Time", and a cover of Buck Owens' "Above and Beyond (The Call of Love)". The album was reissued by Columbia Legacy, with three bonus tracks.

Production

Diamonds & Dirt was Crowell's first album recorded entirely in Nashville and the first aimed squarely at a country audience. It was produced by Tony Brown and Crowell.

Critical reception

The Rolling Stone Album Guide called the album "a stirring treatise on the quest for understanding and balance in a relationship." No Depression wrote that the songs are "played by a band that, in its day, rivaled the Desert Rose Band and Dwight Yoakam’s backing unit as the tightest pseudo-honky-tonkers in country music." Reviewing the reissue, The A.V. Club wrote that the album "still sounds pretty good ... especially in light of the sort of unnatural, reverb-laden late-'80s production that makes everything go 'poof'." Spin deemed it "a traditional country record [on which Crowell] ends ups rocking harder than ever before."

Track listing

All songs written by Rodney Crowell except where noted. AOnly included on Legacy re-issue.

Personnel

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts