The Meanest of Times

The Meanest of Times is the sixth album by the Dropkick Murphys. It was released on September 18, 2007 by their new vanity label, Born & Bred Records, a division of Cooking Vinyl Records. This is the first album they have released that isn’t on Hellcat Records.

The first songs from the album were heard through the band’s MySpace page starting in August 2007. The first track to appear was “(F)lannigan’s Ball”, which was actually a different version than what is featured on the album, as it featured vocals by Al Barr and Ken Casey rather than Ronnie Drew and Spider Stacy.

On the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, the album debuted at number 20, selling about 28,000 copies in its first week. This album was #49 on Rolling Stone’s list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007. The album’s first single, “The State of Massachusetts”, became one of the 100-most-played songs on US modern rock radio in October 2007. Also in October, the song had been added to the playlists of 18 US alternative rock stations. By January of 2008, the song had become one of the 60-most-played alternative rock songs in the United States. This song was #83 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Best Songs of 2007.