Pure Country

[Colt1861Navy]

Martina McBride

Emotion
Martina McBride has always been known for her incendiary delivery and impeccable sense of song. With Emotion, her 5th album for RCA Nashville, the slim keg of vocal dynamite raises the artistic stakes by creating her most diverse and challenging work ever.



Emotion, again co-produced by McBride and longtime collaborator Paul Worley, certainly ups the ante with a collection of songs that maintains McBride's strong woman take on modern living, but it's tempered with a newfound intimacy. McBride has forged a collection of songs that explore smaller relationships in deeper terms. This is an album about what people feel, and it starts with the most important connection of all: one-on-one.
"I don't know if I've ever been this moved by a collection of my own songs. The lyrics are so honest and true. Emotion is the perfect title because it really sums up what this album is about."

"I didn't set out to do something drastically different with this record, but I always want to grow as an artist, to reach and go beyond what I've already done. I don't ever set out to make a particular kind of album. This time I knew I wanted this album to be simpler. Evolution was very produced. It was a very big-sounding record. With Emotion we used a very small band to cut the tracks, so it's a simpler sound. We used the same studios; the same musicians that we always use, but musically, gave everyone room to breathe. Everyone played such amazing parts and played with such heart. So when we went in to overdub, virtually everything we tried to add just wouldn't stick. What the musicians played was so greatŠthere was nothing we could add to it that brought these songs to a better place, which was a unique experience for us because we usually add lots of layers to each song. So it ended up being an interesting creative experience for me and Paul."

For McBride, scaling back musically gave her the room to showcase her range, power and subtle interpretative skills. McBride transfixes the listener with all the colors and nuances of her voice.

McBride has had two years since the release of her double platinum CD Evolution. She's aware that with time comes experience, with experience an even larger palette of emotions and awareness to draw upon.

"I think one of the most important creative tools I have and the reason my records do sound different from each other is the time I take between albums. I come at each one from a different place. After all, I have two years of life I didn't have before: two years of living, of experience, of confidence, even another child! With security, you're able to open up more as an artist, to show more of yourself. I also think that when you have kids, it makes you more open and you get to a place where you can really share what's inside comfortably."

"It's a bit of a difficult thing to free yourself from what you perceive others' expectations to be. With Evolution being so successful, you wonder whether people will expect and want you to just do more of the same. But I've never been interested in making the same album over and over. And I guess I also realize that what people really expect is for me to do something different with each album. That knowledge gives me a lot of freedom - and that freedom really let us make this album be what it was supposed to be rather than what we thought it needed to be. I realized I had to stop analyzing it and just record songs that I really loved. Musically, the record just kind of made itself. It was a mystifying process and I'm still not sure I understand how it happened, but I love it."

"I don't know how people are going to respond to it. But that's the feeling you have before you release every album. Even though on the first listen I think people will hear a difference in this album, it you think about it you can draw comparisons to songs we've recorded in the past. And so I think that this album sounds equally fresh and familiarŠit sounds fresh, but it still has the personality and characteristics that make it country music. Country music has always been a melting pot with elements of rockabilly, bluegrass, rock and blues all incorporated at one time or another. But the lyrics have always reflected mainstream country values. And to me that's what has always been at the heart of country music."

The willingness to push, to reach, to sing great songs that mean something has always defined McBride's career and made her a standard setter in country music. She has transfixed country radio with the drama of "A Broken Wing," the award-winning "Independence Day" and captivating "Wild Angels." McBride has run an emotional cable straight into the hearts and lives of music fans. With Emotion, that strength takes on a new luster.

"It's funny, someone said that to me in the studio three-quarters of the way through this album and I had no idea what they were talking about," McBride laughs. "I don't really think about myself as a standard setter. I just do what I do. I try to find songs that are relatable. My music may change, but I think lyrically, I'm always looking for songs that feel right to meŠthat express something true, whatever that may be."

"It's funny, someone said that to me in the studio three-quarters of the way through this album and I had no idea what they were talking about," McBride laughs. "I don't really think about myself as a standard setter. I just do what I do. I try to find songs that are relatable. My music may change, but I think lyrically, I'm always looking for songs that feel right to meŠthat express something true, whatever that may be."


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