rarely did right by . With her remarkable poised for chart triumph, the label stripped away her potent vocals, added a piano, and released the track as the instrumental which proved a massive hit in its own right. The original is the centerpiece of 's sophomore LP, , and while it remains a high-water mark of , much of the album maintains a similar level of excellence. The over-production and reliance on ill-suited and cliched cover material that hampers her later efforts is absent here. Most of the songs instead originate from the pen of ' , whose nuanced melodies and sublime arrangements (in particular the transcendent ) fit 's soulful vocals like a glove. ~ Jason Ankeny