This album stands as Dan Fogelberg's crowning achievement both commercially and critically. What it is is progressive folk rock/pop. It seems like a logical progression from the soft rock of "Phoenix" and "Souvenirs" mixed in with the experimentalism of "Twin Sons Of Different mothers" and "Netherlands". Considered a "song cycle" about the realities of growing up, it features heavy lyrical prose in all the tracks. It's standouts were four songs that had stayed on the pop charts for as much as 62 weeks during the 1981-1982 period-"Run For The Roses" (a song about the genesis of the horses bred for the '80 Kentucky Derby), "Hard To Say", "Leader Of The Band" (tribute to his father) as well as "Same Old Lang Syne", a New Year's Eve celebratory about Dan's running into an old girlfriend in a 7-11 store in Peoria, Illinois in 1976. A sprawling, ambitious double album, it represents the apex of Fogelberg's success.