Williams waited four years before releasing her next album, 1992’s Sweet Old World. It’s similar in sound to her self-titled album, though it’s thematically much darker.

The album’s strongest stretch is a three-song span toward the middle, stating with the aching title track, directed at a friend lost to suicide (“See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world”). Two tracks later comes ‘Pineola,’ a southern rock jam, spiked with violin, chronicling that loss and the funeral that followed (“I saw his mama, she was standin’ there / His sister, she was there too / I saw them look at us standin’ around the grave / And not a soul they knew”).

Sandwiched between those songs is the lilting ‘Little Angel, Little Brother,’ and it’s easy to assume it was Williams’ brother who took his life.

But apparently he’s very much alive. Still, these songs strung together weave a tapestry of grief, memory and the importance of appreciating life’s gifts.

Of course I’m not featuring any of those songs today, so I apologize for the tangent.

While ‘Passionate Kisses’ was a blend of the personal and political, ‘Sidewalks of the City’ is a blend of the personal and societal. The verses describes a man, the singer’s lover, walking through a city on his way home, passing homeless people and lonely bars. The chorus brings the couple together in the safety of their home and their embrace.