Album III
album by Loudon Wainwright III

Album III is the third full-length album from Loudon Wainwright III. It was released in 1972 on Columbia Records. Album III would spawn Loudon Wainwright's most popular hit single, "Dead Skunk", one of the many 'novelty songs' sprinkled throughout Wainwright's career. Although Wainwright has maintained an ironic, sometimes sepulchral sense of humor, "Dead Skunk", despite its commercial success, has dogged him ever since, as he comments on 1985's album I'm Alright, "Were you embarrassed about 'Dead Skunk'"?
This is the first of his albums to feature a full backing band, on many tracks, which was named White Cloud. Wainwright mostly eschewed a rocking sound for a stripped down acoustic one from the early-1980s onwards.
Track listing
All tracks composed by Loudon Wainwright III except where noted.
“Album III” enters the record as album by Loudon Wainwright III. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Album, album and Loudon can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4712775. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972 and 1985.
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