Two years after being dropped from Warner Brothers Records, the label notified Raitt of their plans to release the "Tongue and Groove" album. "I said it wasn't really fair," recalled Raitt. "I think at this point they felt kind of bad. I mean, I was out there touring on my savings to keep my name up, and my ability to draw was less and less. So they agreed to let me go in and recut half of it, and that's when it came out as "Nine Lives"." A critical and commercial disappointment, "Nine Lives", released in 1986, was Raitt's last new recording for Warner Brothers.