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Album III

album by Loudon Wainwright III

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 1, 2025
Entity authorityQ4712775
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

“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.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1972, 1985—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1972. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Album, album and Loudon.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Album III” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Album, album and Loudon provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

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.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Album III”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Album III primary sources, Album III archive and Album research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Album III”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Album III” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.