7. Some genuinely great songs, decent use of the surround channels, but the production aged like milk. The title track is basically Henley's voice and a synthetic-sounding piano over a 2000s ringtone rap snap beat. And the vocals seem to have had the mids scooped out rather aggressively. Every beat is dead on, even when songs desperately need to breath for the emotional weight of the song to come through. Compare this version of "New York Minute" to the Hell Freezes Over version, it's not even a contest between living, breathing musicians playing the song, and whatever the 1988 equivalent of Pro Tools was (an Atari ST, I guess? White Town used that to much better effect). Tim Schmidt's fretless bass, the actual Eagles singing the chorus, a live trumpet... and Henley's vocals are genuinely more intimate and heartfelt as well.
It's just one of those albums where good material could have been so much more, but trend-chasing over-production holds it back.