[Tupelo Honey], like all of Van Morrison's albums, is both a synthesis of what has preceded it and a statement of something new. It has the musical compactness of Moondance and some of the spirited looseness of Van Morrison His Band and The Street Choir. It is also the best sounding recording he has done so far….

Thematically, Van's songs of dedication and devotion to women are elevated and transformed into an opus. Tupelo Honey is Morrison's "domestic" album and as surely as his earlier work often expressed frustration and despair over his mistreatment by others, Tupelo Honey revels in the happiness and appreciation he feels towards those people who now give him love and strength. It differs from other thematically related albums in its absence of any sense of complacency, smugness, or condescension to those who do not feel the same way. And, conversely, it is dominated by an air of intensity that tells us Van feels his current needs with no less passion than he felt past ones, even as the texture of the album sometimes passes into a bubbly lightness, uniquely reflecting Van's very personal sense of joy.

On the first few plays, Tupelo Honey might strike the casual listener as merely a superior collection of pop tunes but every repeated play reveals its deeper level of meaning. For nine songs Van consistently and consciously develops the theme of "starting a new life" through the growth of his own strength and confidence…. The cuts on the album are then arranged and structured like cuts in a movie: moods are built, lessened, and rebuilt until the album reaches an almost inexorable climax in "Moonshine Whiskey."…

Van's humor often takes a concrete form on this album as he makes two good natured references to Dylan's New Morning during "Moonshine Whiskey."…

"Wild, Wild Night," is a statement of the past, a song done almost from memory, encompassing the style and form of some of Van's earliest music. It is a remembrance of a different kind of need and the ultimate loneliness that always followed from it….

"Straight to Your Heart" transmutes the expression of generalized need for excitement and fulfillment on "Wild, Wild Night" into an expression of desire for a single person. By the time we get to "Woodstock" he is no longer flying down an endless street but being "blown by a cool night's breeze" down a country road towards a home and a family waiting for him. Thus in the space of three songs, Van has moved from a statement of almost desperate isolation to one of need and acceptance of personal stability.

"Starting a New Life," seen in this context, is both the simplest and lyrically the most significant cut on the album as Van spells out with perfect clarity the statement of Tupelo Honey: it expresses his need to take stock of himself, to see how far he has come, to record the support of those who have helped him get there, and together with them to "start a new life." It is fitting that "You're My Woman" is literally about starting a new life. The song is about woman giving birth to child. In it Van not only expresses his love for the woman but his happiness over his newly found place in the order of things…. Not only does he accept his own need for love but he accepts the need of others for his. Only when he is sure of the mutuality of the need, which is externalized through the birth of the child, can he say "that it's really real." Having said that, he can take the song home with the line "You're my woman" and we can share it with him because only after hearing the whole body of the song do we know the full implications of the line. And the song ends once again with the affirmation that "it's really, really real."

"Tupelo Honey" is Van, now hitting his stride, certain, confident, and protective of his feelings. It is a song of pure devotion, a song of dedication, and through its incredible repetitions of the chorus, a song of rededication. "I Wanna Roo You" is a playful courting song, as old-fashioned in mood as it is lyrically. "Want You to Be Around" ("… to keep my both feet on the ground") continues in the same vein with a pure good-timey song of mutual need and desire.

The album culminates in a song of celebration which is the reversal of "Wild, Wild Night." For while the opening cut is a sort of last tribute to the life of the loner "looking for a love," "Moonshine Whiskey" is a joyful statement about the existence and continuation of love and the stability it offers.

Thus the album's themes revolve around Van's conflicting statements of needs, resolved in the end only by the stability he has achieved through relationships and the strength it gives him to renew himself in every way. If the development of this vision is related to us in sequence, with the songs providing the lyrical jumps and changes in mood, the music paints a broader picture and ultimately provides us with the context. It never merely enhances the meaning, it always defines it. (p. 56)

Tupelo Honey is one sense but another example of the artist making increased use of the album as the unit of communication as opposed to merely the song or the cut. Everything on it is perfectly integrated…. While the best cuts on the album, "Wild, Wild Night," "Old, Old Woodstock," "You're My Woman," "Tupelo Honey," and "Moonshine Whiskey" are clearly a cut above the others in their conception, the performance and devotion to the craft are evident on every cut on the album. For Tupelo Honey is not only an album of beautiful themes, dazzling musical motifs, and exquisite performances. It is an album that was conceived and delivered by a very proud man. A man proud enough and happy enough "… to put on his hot pants and promenade down Funky Broadway until the cows come home …"

The next time he does I would be proud to be promenading right next to him. (pp. 56-7)