Stranded (album)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
Christgau's Record Guide	B+[3]
Pitchfork	9.2/10[4]
Q	[5]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[6]
Select	4/5[7]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	9/10[8]
Tom Hull	A+[9]

Reviewing for Rolling Stone in 1974, Paul Gambaccini wrote: "Roxy Music can no longer be ignored by Americans. They may not achieve the commercial success they have in Britain, where Stranded reached Number One, but their artistic performance must be recognized. Stranded is an eloquent statement that there are still frontiers which American pop has not explored."[10]

Reviewing for Creem in 1974, Robert Christgau found Ferry to be an "ambitious" but "oblique" artist and quoted New York artist Sidney Tillem's 1969 thesis on figurative art, "Aspects and Prospects", to conclude his review of the album: "By moral in the context of art I mean a style which executes the deeper social and psychological function of form, as opposed to a particular aspect of vanity called taste. Pop sensibility, pop consciousness, pop sentimentality have been invaluable in clarifying the provincialism and nostalgia that actually permeate a culture that has come to pride itself on sophistication. But they have not resulted in a new art simply because the requisite idealism has been lacking."[11]

In a positive retrospective review, AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote of the album: "Under the direction of Bryan Ferry, Roxy moved toward[s] relatively straightforward territory, adding greater layers of piano and heavy guitars. Even without the washes of Eno's synthesizers, Roxy's music remains unsettling on occasion, yet in this new incarnation, they favor more measured material."[2]

The gatefold cover photograph was taken by Karl Stoecker and styled by Antony Price, and shows the Playboy model Marilyn Cole. In an interview with the writer Tony Barrell in 2007, Cole recalled: "It was at a tiny studio, somewhere off the Edgware Road in London. I'd never even heard of Roxy Music. I very soon understood that I was in safe hands, among some very talented people. There was a red dress hanging up, and I thought, ‘Ooh, good, I'm going to get to wear a really nice dress'... whereupon, as I'm having my make-up done, Antony comes in and starts ripping the dress – a hole there, a slash there. I was thinking, ‘Oh no.' They stuck me on this big log and explained I was supposed to be stranded in a jungle, and then they started spraying me; they sprayed my hair gold, and there was a whole mist coming over me and the dress was getting wet in all the right places." [12]

All tracks are written by Bryan Ferry except where noted.

Roxy Music

• Bryan Ferry – vocals, piano, electric piano, harmonica
• John Gustafson – bass guitar
• Eddie Jobson – synthesizers, keyboards, electric violin
• Andy Mackay (as Andrew Mackay) – oboe, saxophone, treatments
• Phil Manzanera – guitar, treatments
• Paul Thompson – drums, timpani

Additional personnel

• Chris Laurence – string bass on "Sunset"
• The London Welsh Male Choir – chorus on "Psalm"
• Chris Thomas – production, bass on "Street Life"[13] (uncredited)
• Nicolas de Ville – cover design
• Karl Stoecker – photography

The bass guitarist John Taylor, during his solo period after leaving Duran Duran in 1997, organized a Roxy Music tribute album called Dream Home Heartaches: Remaking/Remodeling Roxy Music (released 1999). On it, Ferry and Mackay's "A Song for Europe" was covered by Dave Gahan and "Street Life" was performed by Phantom 5 (a.k.a. Gerry Laffy and Simon Laffy).[14]

• Super seventies review on the album