After three albums on Minneapolis’s Twin/Tone Records, the Replacements signed to Sire Records. A record label with a history of its own, its line up had included bands like the Turtles, Duane Eddy, and Del Shannon. When punk and new wave hit in the mid 1970s, Sire was mostly independent and signed the early pioneers of the genre. The Ramones, the Dead Boys, and Talking Heads, but in the late 1970s Warner Bros. worked out a major distribution deal, which essentially made the label a subsidiary of the company. 

Writing their own rules, the band would frequently do things like perform shows where they wouldn’t play the hits or in some cases not play any of their songs at all with all cover sets. If you’ve read the book, Trouble Boys by Bob Mehr, you can get the impression that the Replacements didn’t give a fuck about their career, but if you listened to their albums, you could think otherwise.The band could have been bigger than they were, if it weren’t for the self sabotage. 

The Replacements’ last record on Twin/Tone was 1984’s Let It Be. Despite the band’s behavior off stage, Paul Westerberg wanted to write a more sincere record. Given the band’s previous output, it was a change of pace for them. Westerberg would dabble with poppier songs on their second album, Hootenanny, with songs like “Color Me Impressed” and “Within Your Reach,” but Let It Be would put the band on a different path from their not quite punk rock enough beginnings. Let It Be would produce one single, “I Will Dare,” a slower shuffle that features Westerberg on a mandolin during the chorus and features Peter Buck of REM playing the solo that Bob Stinson reportedly couldn’t play.

Tim is the sloppy (positive) precursor to the cleaner sound of Pleased To Meet Me. The songs are uneven, but it feels like the point. Opener, “Hold My Life,” is an Alex Chilton inspired rock song, but is not the strongest on the album. Despite not being a single, the band recorded a video for the song.  There’s a difference between lyrical honesty and lyrical corniness, which this song’s chorus definitely falls under with its, “Razzle dazzle, razzle droll” and its “Razzle dazzle, razzle die.” This is not my favorite Replacements song lyrically. 

Another album, another shuffle, “Kiss Me On The Bus” is the second shuffle in just as many albums. Although, you could probably lump “Waitress in the Sky” under as a shuffle as well if you needed to. When Westerberg finished “I Will Dare” shortly after Hootenanny had been finalized and declared it the best song he’d ever written. It was more than expected he would jump into other songs in this vein. Its not as strong as its predecessor, but it does hit the marks of a great Replacements song; honesty, urgency, and desperation. This song’s solo was performed by the album’s producer, Tommy Erdelyi, better known as Tommy Ramone. 

The first side closes with the Roy Orbison inspired “Swingin Party.” A song about the anxiety of always being on display for the world and the nerves it caused. Westerberg has attributed the amount of drinking The Replacements did before a show to this sentiment. While I never got to see the Replacements in their heyday, it makes me wonder how much of the band’s self sabotage was really just collective anxiety. Westerberg’s dive into poppier sounds after an album and a half (Sorry Ma… and Stink) of mostly fast punk rock songs, feels forced in a maybe this is what we should have played all along type of way, but paid off in the end. 

“Bastards of Young,” Westerberg’s anthemic side two opener is a fan favorite, but again it seems the Replacements do things back asswards. In a time where records were frontloaded with singles, “Bastards of Young” seems to have been shrugged out by the band as the second single despite being the stronger song. It remains one of the defining songs of the band and was inspired by Westerberg’s sister, who left Minnesota to be an actress. She felt the need to go somewhere else because she didn’t know where she fit in, something Westerberg shared with her at the time. While “Bastards of Young” was the song that got the Replacements banned from SNL during their only appearance in the show, the music video produced for the song is an extreme exercise in minimalism. 

While, also, not an official single, “Left of the Dial” took off for the Replacements. On the surface the song is about the barrage of smaller bands trying to break through college radio stations only to give up hope when bands like the Replacements and REM were able to do so. The track is actually a secret love song Westerberg wrote about then girlfriend Lynn Blakely from the band Let’s Active and their long distance relationship. With the lovers both being in bands it had been some time since either had seen each other. While driving one night Westerberg heard an interview with her, but the voice kept fading in and out. 

The album closes with another fan favorite, “Here Comes A Regular,” it features Westerberg melancholy vocals paired with an acoustic guitar singing about one of the band’s watering holes, the CC Club. The rest of the band was not a stranger to Westerberg’s “solo” songs with the Hootenanny track, “Within Your Reach” using a drummer machine and “Answer Machine” on the previous record. The song is about being stuck in the same cycle. Something Paul and the Replacements probably felt a lot as they got more and more into the music machine and the isolation felt sometimes. 

The Replacements jump to major prompted a lot of things. It was the end of an era for the band, as original guitarist Bob Stinson would not return for the bands follow up album, Pleased To Meet Me. Whether it was due to a power struggle with Westerberg or his alcohol and drug use, his void would be filled by Slim Dunlap and the band would dive deeper into poppier sounds. Tim has been re-released twice with extended editions. The first in the late 2000s with a handful of bonus tracks and also in 2023 with three extra discs of material ; including the original version of “Can’t Hardly Wait.” While it was meant to be included on Tim, it was reworked and saved for the next album.

The Replacements haven’t toured for the better part of a decade mostly due to Paul Westerberg’s retirement from music, but you can still catch Tommy Stinson on the road with his band, Cowboys By The Campfire. Given the almost cryptic message Westerberg gave his fans during their last tour it seems it may have been for the money. Each night Westerberg wore a white t-shirt with a letter spray painted on it. By the time the band had reached the end of the tour a phrase had been revealed, “I have always loved you, but now I must whore my past.” Every few years the band releases the aforementioned extended editions of their albums with so much bonus material hardcore fans and collectors eat it up keeping Westerberg’s retirement afloat. 

Tim earned its accolades, in 2012 the record was put  on Rolling Stone’s list of the five hundred greatest albums of all time, and Alternative Press ranked it fourth in their list of Top 99 albums between 1985 and 1995. While things like that are usually arbitrary it shows the everlasting power of a band, whether they cared about where there major label debut would take them or not.