Cheap Seats is the fifteenth studio album by the American country music band Alabama, released in 1993 by RCA Records. It produced the singles "Reckless", "T.L.C. A.S.A.P." and the title track. Of these, "Reckless" was the band's final Number One hit on the Billboard country charts until 2011's "Old Alabama", and "The Cheap Seats" was the band's first single in fourteen years to miss Top Ten of the charts. Alabama produced the album along with Josh Leo and Larry Michael Lee, except for "Angels Among Us", which bassist Teddy Gentry produced.
The album produced three singles on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs) charts. First was "Reckless", which became the band's thirty-second number one on that chart. After it came the number seven "T.L.C. A.S.A.P.", written by Gary Baker and Frank J. Myers, who then comprised the duo Baker & Myers. The album's title track was the final single release; it was co-written by Randy Sharp and Marcus Hummon, who also played harmonica on it. With a number thirteen peak, it became the band's first single to miss the country top ten since "My Home's in Alabama" in 1980. Of the three singles from this album, only "The Cheap Seats" was made into a music video.
"Angels Among Us" was also recorded by Becky Hobbs, its co-writer, on her 1994 album The Boots I Came to Town In. Alabama's rendition entered the country charts twice from unsolicited airplay: first at number 54 in 1994, and later at number 28 in January 1995 (after "We Can't Love Like This Anymore", the first single from the band's Greatest Hits Volume 3). "Angels Among Us" also reached number 22 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 in January 1996. "Katy Brought My Guitar Back Today" was later recorded by Rhett Akins on his 1995 first album A Thousand Memories. Al Anderson, then a member of the band NRBQ, co-wrote "A Better Word for Love", which NRBQ recorded on its 1994 album Message for the Mess Age.
Dan Cooper gave the album three stars out of five in his Allmusic review. He called the title track "way cute" and cited "A Better Word for Love" as a "quiet, morning [sic] love song".[2] Tom Roland gave an identical star rating in New Country magazine, citing it as an "excellent example of a band that still has a chemistry holding it together" and "[n]othing monumental here, just a good, solid Alabama album". He also cited the title track as a standout for "avoiding the now-stale Dixie tributes".[3]
