"I defend The Hard Way to the death, because I almost died in the process of making it," Steve Earle told a reporter in 2000, and he wasn't just being melodramatic. Earle's well-documented addiction to heroin and cocaine was spiraling out of control in 1990 while he was holed up in Memphis recording The Hard Way. And while his 1988 album Copperhead Road showed him moving away from country and more toward hard rock -- and earned him a minor crossover hit in the process -- his record label was hoping for a major commercial breakthrough so that his sales might begin to match his good press. The resulting album is a bit of a mess, often sloppy and overbearing, where his country sides had been dynamic and precise, and Earle's voice was starting to show the strain of his lifestyle. Even his songwriting, usually peerless, wasn't at its best here, with When the People Find Out, Regular Guy, and Justice in Ontario sounding like they were tossed together fast to round out the album (the latter sounds like a transparent stroke to his Canadian fan base, where Copperhead Road went multi-platinum). But even his weakest studio album has plenty to recommend it, the all-too-biographical Have Mercy and West Nashville Boogie, and Billy Austin, a deeply moving ballad about a man on death row. The Hard Way isn't much of an album by Earle's standards, but it's still got enough heart, soul, and fire to prove Earle couldn't throw away his talent, no matter how hard he tried. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

1		The Other Kind
2		Promise You Anything
3		Esmeralda's Hollywood
4		Hopeless Romantics
5		This Highway's Mine (Roadmaster)
6		Billy Austin
7		Justice In Ontario
8		Have Mercy
9		When The People Find Out
10		Country Girl
11		Regular Guy
12		West Nashville Boogie
13		Close Your Eyes