Post by erik on Feb 3, 2024 18:17:17 GMT -5
Trisha Yearwood, one of the leading ladies of the 1990's country music explosion, is in the Pop Music Album Spotlight with the album by which she entered the New Millennium.
REAL LIVE WOMAN (Trisha Yearwood; MCA-Nashville; 2000)
At no time in the history (a very checkered history, by the way) of country music were female singers ever more of a force in the direction of the genre than between 1989 and 2003. One of the leaders in that movement was Monticello, Georgia native Trisha Yearwood, who, since her self-titled 1991 debut album, has been one of the premiere female artists of the genre. She has also, however, had to fight off a lot of behind-the-scenes innuendo about how country megastar Garth Brooks (whom she married in 2005) supposedly lobbied on her behalf—the old sexism of “sleeping one’s way to the top”.
Besides all that crazy mishegas, Trisha, while very much a Nashville artist and a member of the Grand Ole Opry, was not simply influenced by the country music she heard on the radio as a youngster in her quiet central Georgia hometown during the 1970’s. A fair amount of her listening pleasure came from much farther out west. This became very evident when, in late 1999, she and her long-time producer Garth Fundis worked on what would become her eighth studio album, Real Live Woman, released in March 2000.
On many of her past albums, Trisha relied on the songwriting prowess of Matraca Berg, a veteran of the Nashville scene, and Real Live Woman was no different, as she covered “Come Back When It Ain’t Rainin’” (co-written by Matraca and the legendary Harlan Howard), and “I’m Still Alive” (a co-write between Matraca, and Al Anderson). However, she also went well outside the Nashville beltway as well, with, among other things, a cover of the heretofore-obscure Bruce Springsteen song “Sad Eyes”, which had Jackson Browne on harmony vocals. Emmylou Harris, a big favorite of Trisha’s, also aided and abetted Trisha on harmony vocals on the slightly sarcastic Paul Craft-Cadillac Holmes number “Too Bad You’re No Good”; and the David Batteau-Tom Snow song “Wild For You Baby” had been recorded by another favorite of Trisha’s, in Bonnie Raitt.
By all reckoning, however, the stand-out track on Real Live Woman was Trisha’s cover of “Try Me Again”, which her spiritual role model Linda Ronstadt recorded and co-wrote (with Andrew Gold) for her classic 1976 album Hasten Down The Wind. Trisha was reportedly anxious to record the song, but very nervous as well because of her unabashed admiration of Linda. She, however, kept the straightforward country-rock arrangement of Linda’s original, earning her hero’s approbation.
While not an absolute mega-smash like those being released at around the same time by Faith Hill and Shania Twain, Real Live Woman continued to burnish Trisha’s reputation as a singer who could hold her own with a style of country music just as much influenced by Los Angeles as by Nashville. The title song, written by Bobbie Cryner, got up to #16 on the country singles chart and #81 on the Hot 100 in the spring of 2000; while “Where Are You Now?” (written by Kim Richey and Mary Chapin Carpenter) hit #45 on the country singles chart. The album also hit #4 on Billboard’s Country Album Chart, and #27 on the Top 200 Album Chart, hitting the Platinum sales mark by the summer of 2000.
Like too many female singers from her era, by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Trisha’s music got obscured by the return of testosterone male redneck stuff to the country charts. Still, Trisha continued to record, albeit at a much slower pace (her 2019 album Every Girl was only the fourth studio album she released since Real Live Woman); and in December 2019, she was one of the artists to pay tribute to Linda, who had long since stopped singing because of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, at that year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
REAL LIVE WOMAN (Trisha Yearwood; MCA-Nashville; 2000)
At no time in the history (a very checkered history, by the way) of country music were female singers ever more of a force in the direction of the genre than between 1989 and 2003. One of the leaders in that movement was Monticello, Georgia native Trisha Yearwood, who, since her self-titled 1991 debut album, has been one of the premiere female artists of the genre. She has also, however, had to fight off a lot of behind-the-scenes innuendo about how country megastar Garth Brooks (whom she married in 2005) supposedly lobbied on her behalf—the old sexism of “sleeping one’s way to the top”.
Besides all that crazy mishegas, Trisha, while very much a Nashville artist and a member of the Grand Ole Opry, was not simply influenced by the country music she heard on the radio as a youngster in her quiet central Georgia hometown during the 1970’s. A fair amount of her listening pleasure came from much farther out west. This became very evident when, in late 1999, she and her long-time producer Garth Fundis worked on what would become her eighth studio album, Real Live Woman, released in March 2000.
On many of her past albums, Trisha relied on the songwriting prowess of Matraca Berg, a veteran of the Nashville scene, and Real Live Woman was no different, as she covered “Come Back When It Ain’t Rainin’” (co-written by Matraca and the legendary Harlan Howard), and “I’m Still Alive” (a co-write between Matraca, and Al Anderson). However, she also went well outside the Nashville beltway as well, with, among other things, a cover of the heretofore-obscure Bruce Springsteen song “Sad Eyes”, which had Jackson Browne on harmony vocals. Emmylou Harris, a big favorite of Trisha’s, also aided and abetted Trisha on harmony vocals on the slightly sarcastic Paul Craft-Cadillac Holmes number “Too Bad You’re No Good”; and the David Batteau-Tom Snow song “Wild For You Baby” had been recorded by another favorite of Trisha’s, in Bonnie Raitt.
By all reckoning, however, the stand-out track on Real Live Woman was Trisha’s cover of “Try Me Again”, which her spiritual role model Linda Ronstadt recorded and co-wrote (with Andrew Gold) for her classic 1976 album Hasten Down The Wind. Trisha was reportedly anxious to record the song, but very nervous as well because of her unabashed admiration of Linda. She, however, kept the straightforward country-rock arrangement of Linda’s original, earning her hero’s approbation.
While not an absolute mega-smash like those being released at around the same time by Faith Hill and Shania Twain, Real Live Woman continued to burnish Trisha’s reputation as a singer who could hold her own with a style of country music just as much influenced by Los Angeles as by Nashville. The title song, written by Bobbie Cryner, got up to #16 on the country singles chart and #81 on the Hot 100 in the spring of 2000; while “Where Are You Now?” (written by Kim Richey and Mary Chapin Carpenter) hit #45 on the country singles chart. The album also hit #4 on Billboard’s Country Album Chart, and #27 on the Top 200 Album Chart, hitting the Platinum sales mark by the summer of 2000.
Like too many female singers from her era, by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Trisha’s music got obscured by the return of testosterone male redneck stuff to the country charts. Still, Trisha continued to record, albeit at a much slower pace (her 2019 album Every Girl was only the fourth studio album she released since Real Live Woman); and in December 2019, she was one of the artists to pay tribute to Linda, who had long since stopped singing because of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, at that year’s Kennedy Center Honors.