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(Pronounced ‘lĕh-’nérd ‘skin-’nérd) is the debut album from Lynyrd Skynyrd, released August 13, 1973. The album features several of the band’s most well-known songs, including “Gimme Three Steps”, “Simple Man”, “Tuesday’s Gone” and “Free Bird”, the latter of which launched the band to national stardom.

He is, arguably, the most underrated of all the ’60s soul performers associated with Atlantic Records, although his records were more likely than those of most soul stars to become crossover hits.
~Dave Marsh

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..Before and after he became a Black Muslim minister, this East Texas moralist-jokester mixed such timeless trifles as “Skinny Legs and All” (God, don’t you even remember that one?) and “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)” (a lucky last gasp occasioning a luckier album that came out for “sissies”) with a good-humored country wisdom that rivaled Smokey’s urban variant for pith and empathy.
~Robert Christgau

“Eccentric and quirky are the best ways to describe the Eels’ debut effort, Beautiful Freak. Concise pop tunes form the backbone of the album, yet tinges of despair and downright meanness surface just when you’ve been lulled into thinking this is another pop group, as titles like “My Beloved Monster,” “Your Lucky Day in Hell” and “Novocaine for the Soul” indicate.”
– Review by James Chrispell (allmusic)