Classic Rewind: Sugarland – ‘Baby Girl’

Single Review: LeAnn Rimes – ‘Crazy Women’

Are you watching, Tanya Tucker?  LeAnn Rimes is following your lead.  The teen-country singing sensation turned Hollywood rock-and-roll bad girl isn’t really a new concept to country music, but LeAnn Rimes sure seems to be hitting all those same old Tanya moves these days.  And the best part is that, just like Tanya, LeAnn is wearing her image on her sleeve and even taunting the oval-mouths with her music.  Recent years have found her singing about dancing and drinking in the Mississippi backwoods with two young fellas, and then just as her own marriage crumbled, she issued a new single, a cover of John Anderson’s saucy 80s hit ‘Swingin’, a stalled attempt at leading off the jovially titled covers album Lady and Gentlemen.  All this seemed to beg for more tabloid headlines.

True, the tabloids are giving LeAnn much love these days, but so are the network TV shows – she’s still a featured performer on nearly every major awards show – and she continues to chart higher with both the Hot 100 and U.S. Dance chart, even though her music is clearly tailored for country radio.  The only place she can’t get anybody’s attention these days is with country radio programmers.  Why hasn’t anybody noticed that she’s clearly making some of the best music of any of her peers?  That she’s fully transitioned from child star to a woman with something to say about life, at least her own.

Enter: ‘Crazy Women’, a tale of woman scorned, a new song to accompany the bevy of songs originally recorded by country giants she’s tackling.  A plucking banjo helps the singer tell the story of a woman come to hunt down and drag home her wandering man, and the song even comes complete with a pair of head-turning bookend lines.  It’s a bit too edgy, and yes, even too straightforward country – and therefore might offend, to have much chance at being her next big country hit.  The rest of the production recalls the best of the Dixie Chicks hybrid of bluegrass and country, but does falter a bit at the end when the music and harmonies begin to compete for attention with Rimes’ strong competent singing.  LeAnn Rimes seems to be here to stay, and hell-bent on doing things her way.  Country radio may not pay attention just yet, but I bet Tanya is.

Songwriters: Brandy Clark, Jessie Jo Dillon, and Shane McAnally

Grade: B+

Listen here.