Cheap Thrills (Big Brother and the Holding Company album)

Cheap Thrills
Studio album by
Big Brother and the Holding Company
ReleasedAugust 12, 1968 (1968-08-12)
RecordedMarch 2 – May 20, 1968
Genre
Length37:11
LabelColumbia
ProducerJohn Simon
Big Brother and the Holding Company chronology
Big Brother & the Holding Company
(1967) 		Cheap Thrills
(1968) 		Be a Brother
(1970)
Janis Joplin chronology
Big Brother & The Holding Company
(1967) 		Cheap Thrills
(1968) 		I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!
(1969)
Singles from Cheap Thrills
  1. "Piece of My Heart"
    Released: August 1968

Cheap Thrills is the second studio album by American rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, released on August 12, 1968, by Columbia Records. Cheap Thrills was the band's final album with lead singer Janis Joplin before she left to begin a solo career. For Cheap Thrills, the band and producer John Simon incorporated recordings of crowd noises to give the impression of a live album, for which it was subsequently mistaken by many listeners. Only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded live in concert, at the grand opening of the Fillmore East on March 8th, 1968.

Cheap Thrills was a critical and commercial success, reaching number one on the Billboard Top LPs chart for eight nonconsecutive weeks in 1968. In 2007, Cheap Thrills was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[2] Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album number 338 in its 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".[3] It was repositioned to number 372 in the 2020 list.[4]

  1. ^ Gallucci, Michael (23 February 2021). "Top 25 Psychedelic Rock Albums". Ultimate Classic Rock. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  2. ^ "GRAMMY HALL OF FAME AWARD". www.grammy.com. Retrieved 2023-07-17.
  3. ^ "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. 31 May 2009.
  4. ^ "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. 31 December 2023.