I Am Shelby Lynne

One of the new breed of US crossover country stars, 30-year-old Shelby Lynne has a lived-in voice and the offhand grace of a southern steel magnolia. Although she recorded some albums in Nashville, it wasn't until she returned to her native Alabama that she made this, her debut for Mercury, and the one she is most proud of. Mixing lilting Southern soul with slide guitar country on tracks like "Leavin" and "Why Can't You Be", she has the same down-home, dead-sharp style of 1970s deep-soul sisters like Ann Peebles or Shirley Brown. There's also a touch of girl-group pop purity in songs like "Your Lies" and languid nostalgia on "Where I'm From", a wry tribute to a hometown that "ain't no Margaret Mitchell". Most powerful, though, is the acoustic reverie "Lookin' Up". When she was 17, Lynne's father killed her mother before shooting himself and that sense of personal tragedy seeps into this song, especially in the classic line: "I'm lookin' up for the next thing that brings me down". --Lucy O'Brien

Label: Unknown
Studio: Mercury
Released: 1999-10-04
Format: Audio CD