This Perfect World is an album released by singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston

Freedy Johnston

Freedy Johnston is a New York City-based singer-songwriter originally from Kinsley, Kansas.Having scored several minor hits since the early 1990s, Johnston's songs are often about troubled loners, and cover topics like heartbreak, alienation and disappointment...

 in 1994.

It is an album steeped in regret and loss. The narrator of "Across the Avenue" is unable to get past the memory of seeing his lover killed in a pedestrian accident. In "Two Lovers Stop," a young couple commit suicide rather than let themselves be ripped away from each other. The title track concerns a dying old man returning to apologize to his estranged daughter for unspecified past misdeeds. Among the other songs, "Evie's Tears" apparently refers to sexual abuse (evidently by a priest), and "Dolores" is based on Nabokov's Lolita

Lolita

Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...

. Despite the preponderance of dark subject matter, the album has a jaunty feel as Johnston demonstrates an ability to craft winning pop melodies.

Reviews of the album were overflowing with praise, although those same reviewers also generally felt that it didn't quite measure up to his previous album, 1992's Can You Fly.

This Perfect World was produced by Butch Vig

Butch Vig

Butch Vig is an American musician and record producer, best known internationally as the drummer of the Madison, Wisconsin-based alternative rock band Garbage and the producer of multi-platinum selling album Nevermind by Nirvana....

, who also played on the album's minor hit, "Bad Reputation." Other notable contributors include cellist Jane Scarpantoni

Jane Scarpantoni

Jane Scarpantoni is a classically trained cello player who has played on a number of alternative rock albums.She was a member of Hoboken, New Jersey's Tiny Lights in the mid-'80s, then went on to play with other musicians especially those associated with the Hoboken underground rock scene of the...

, who performed on two tracks, and Marshall Crenshaw

Marshall Crenshaw

Marshall Crenshaw is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist best known for his song "Someday, Someway".-Biography:...

.

Track listing

1. "Bad Reputation
   Bad Reputation (Freedy Johnston song)
   Bad Reputation is a single by Freedy Johnston on his major label debut This Perfect World. It is his best known song, and has received airplay along with being featured in the closing credits of the 1995 film Kicking and Screaming. Bad Reputation is considered one of the highlights on the...
   
   "
2. "Evie's Tears"
3. "Can't Sink This Town"
4. "This Perfect World
   This Perfect World (song)
   This Perfect World is a song by singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston from his 1994 album of the same name. It concerns a man who has evidently done something horrible confronting a person from his past. The music adds emotional sophistication to the lyrics by shifting between dark, gloomy verses in...
   
   "
5. "Cold Again"
6. "Two Lovers Stop"
7. "Across the Avenue"
8. "Gone Like the Water"
9. "Dolores"
10. "Evie's Garden"
11. "Disappointed Man"
12. "I Can Hear the Laughs"