Come Away with Me

Composition

Come Away with Me is a mellow, acoustic pop album with soul and country overtones. It also incorporates blues, jazz, and folk styles. Bobby Dodd of All About Jazz writes that, although the album features jazz standards, jazz purists and academics "may deny [Jones] jazz credibility for her folk infusion". Jones' guitarist Jesse Harris and bassist Lee Alexander wrote most of the album's songs, which feature simple melodies and progressions.

Commercial performance

In the US, Come Away with Me debuted at No. 139 on the Billboard 200 before climbing to No. 1 in January 2003, almost a year after its release. In total the album has appeared on the Billboard 200 164 weeks. It was certified platinum from the Recording Industry Association of America on August 22, 2002. It went on to sell over ten million copies over the next year, and on February 15, 2005, was certified as a diamond record by the RIAA. As of March 2016, the album has sold 11.1 million copies, making it the eleventh best-selling album of the Nielsen SoundScan era in the US. The album sold approximately 26 million copies worldwide.

In Germany, though the album debuted at just No. 37, it nevertheless stayed for a total of 141 weeks on the official German Albums Chart and it managed to reach No. 2 in its 37th week on that chart, where it stayed for 4 weeks. In the end, Come Away with Me sold 750,000 copies, reaching 5× gold, being her most successful album in that country and one of the longest-staying albums on the German Albums Chart.

Polyphonic HMI's "Hit Song Science" software predicted the album's success months before its release, contradicting skeptical executives.

Critical reception

Come Away with Me received acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 82 out of 100, which indicates "universal acclaim" based on 9 reviews.

The album received 3.5 out of 4 stars from both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Los Angeles Times reviews. AllMusic's David R. Adler wrote that "while the mood of this record stagnates after a few songs, it does give a strong indication of Jones' alluring talents." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice cited it as "the most unjazz album [Blue Note] has ever released" and criticized that "Jones's voice dominates the record" because "her main writers are pretty anonymous", although he found it to be a "sincere" and "exemplary biz success story in which the good guys win." In his Consumer Guide, Christgau picked out her cover version of Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart" as a "choice cut",(), calling it "a good song on an album that isn't worth your time or money".

The A.V. Club gave it a favorable review and called the album "A showcase for Jones' remarkable voice, the disc captures a singer whose rare instinct for interpretation always serves the song, rather than working against it." E! Online gave it an A and stated: "Gorgeous and intimate, the 14 songs on her debut disc ache with romantic maturity and a smart, slow-jam sexiness that belies the fact that, at 22, Jones is hardly older than Britney Spears." Kludge included it on their list of best albums of 2002.

Accolades

The album won eight awards (Jones won five of the awards) at the Grammy Awards of 2003, including Album of the Year, as well as Record of the Year and Song of the Year for "Don't Know Why". Although she was happy about her success, Jones felt bad about sweeping the Grammy Awards. In an interview for 60 Minutes, Jones told Katie Couric:

I felt like I went to somebody else's birthday party and I ate all their cake. Without anybody else getting a piece. That's how I felt.

Rolling Stone ranked Come Away with Me at number 54 on its list of the 100 Best Albums of the Decade.

Awards

Grammy Awards