The Shedd Institute welcomes Nellie McKay back once again. I mean…how could we NOT? Be prepared for yet another unexpected and unexplainable evening of gobsmacking entertainment; this time focussing on Nellie's demo tapes for her 2004 debut album, Get Away From Me.
When Get Away From Me was released on February 10, 2004, Rolling Stone gave the album ★★★★. McKay made her national TV debut on The Late Show with David Letterman, and the record landed in the Billboard Top 200. She was compared to both “Doris Day and Eminem,” said NPR Morning Edition. “And throw in a bit of Billie Holiday for good measure.” “It was a different time,” says Nellie.

“Nellie McKay—and her debut album—were not perfect. They were better than that. They were real. And in a year that saw seminal punk from Green Day (American Idiot) and seminal hip hop from Kanye (College Dropout), which came out the same day as Get Away From Me, that was enough to make it the best album of the year.”–– Audiophix

Revisiting the album, Salon named it “one of the great pop albums of the early 21st century.” Popmatters writes, “Two decades later, the circumstances and names differ, but the anguish remains the same, as politicians, dictators, and other killers make life hell for ordinary citizens.”