LeAnn Rimes

One Liner: Country pop royalty from the 90's who is apparently still making music

Wikipedia Genre:  Country, pop, dance-pop
Home: Garland, Texas

Poster Position: Late Addition
Day: Friday at 5 on the T-Mobile Stage
Weekend Two Only.

Thoughts:  I had kind of forgotten about LeAnn Rimes entirely, to be honest.  But in my head, she was definitely a country star who must have just fallen off the radar over time.  Now, listening to her top songs again, I realize that she morphed into something more akin to Celine Dion instead of just purely country.  She obviously still has the pure country hits like "Blue" and most of the songs on that first album, but her bigger songs are the Magic 95 mainstays of stuff like "How Do I Live" and "Can't Fight the Moonlight," which are decidedly un-country tunes.  That first one is, by far, her most popular tune.  124.3 million streams.

I guess you consider that to be country music, but it really crosses over into the adult contemporary world.  I bet a billion people used that for their first dance at their wedding.  That video is awful, but it's a really pretty song.  Wait, was that used in Armageddon when Ben Affleck is about to fly to space to nuke the rock?  I think it was.  HAHA - no, it was freaking Con Air.  That is almost even better.

Wait, but that isn't Rimes.  Oh, this wasn't even her song?  It was a Diane Warren song, and both Rimes and Trisha Yearwood covered it.  Yearwood was the one they used for Con Air.  This is great:

It was one of the most awkward moments in all of country music history, created — and then resurrected — some 2,000 miles away from Nashville, in Hollywood. When executives behind the 1997 Nicolas Cage movie, Con Air, changed their minds about including LeAnn Rimes’ version of the soaring “How Do I Live” in their film, they approached Trisha Yearwood about cutting the song instead. Little did they know how attached the then 15-year-old original singer (and her record label) had become to the song…. Rimes shot a video for it (see above) and put the wheels in motion to release it as a single — which both women’s respective record labels did on May 27, 1997.

Cue the “feud.” But Rimes and Yearwood never duked it out… refusing to speak ill of one another in the press, though both did express frustration over the situation. Instead, radio stations, newspapers and even the Grammy Awards went to battle for them. Local media outlets conducted polls asking which version was better. Radio stations put listeners on the air to bash one version over the other (while several deejays also created “duets” by mashing the cuts). And on this day (January 6th) in 1998, both singers received Grammy nominations for Best Country Female Vocal Performance for “How Do I Live.” It was the first time in the Recording Academy’s history that two different artists were nominated for the same song.

Wild.  Well, Trisha's version has only 17 million streams on Spotify, so we know who won!

I have a strange place in my heart for "Can't Fight the Moonlight" and "Right Kind of Wrong," which are more of a Brittney Spears type move, and came out right about the time when I was still downloading songs off of the Internet if they ever piqued my interest.  So I definitely remember jamming "Right Kind of Wrong" back in the day.

Four songs on that soundtrack?  Seems like a weird way to make a soundtrack, but whatever.  "But I need your touch just too damn much."  It's a very bad lite rock tune that literally sounds like Brittney could have cut it, but I still remember it fondly anyway.

She actually has a brand new album, 2021's Whatever We Wanna.  Which is very unfortunate.  Loads and loads of countrified electric guitar.  Oh, and an hour and freaking 14 minutes long.  GTFOH with that.  Just do the best eight songs and let the rest of us free from this musical oppression.  "Whatever We Wanna" is the perfect example of this - lyrics about just lettin' loose, over a rockin' set of guitar licks, and Rimes even does some little vocal moves that evoke the party-girl sounds of classic Shania Twain.  It's a deeply bad song.  Only 11k streams.  The top track from the album is "And It Feels Like," with 103k streams on Spotify.

The fascinating thing (at least to me) is that she has continued to crank out albums this whole time.  Even though I hadn't thought of her in decades, she put out albums in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2011, 2007, 2005, 2004, 2002, 2001 (called God Bless America, of course), 2001, 1998, 1997, 1997, 1996, and her 1996 debut Blue.  That is a consistent output of music.

She became a star at age 13 after releasing "Blue," and everyone lost their minds over the little girl with the huge voice.  The album went to number 1 and went multi-platinum.  She's won all sorts of Grammys, ACMs, CMAs, Billboards, and other trophies.  Has sold over 37 million freaking records.  That sounds insane.

On that debut album, in addition to "Blue," which is some great Patsy Cline-esque vocal fireworks, "One Way Ticket (Because I Can)" is also a great song.  She doesn't sound anything like a 13 year old child on that album.  Kind of amazing.  "Cattle Call" is a great song and her rendition is good.  But "Blue" is the one you need to hear.

Wait, that's Barton Springs!  Why in the world is Barton Springs in her debut video?!?  Also, she doesn't 13 at all in that video - I'm trying to imagine what my 13 year old would look like if she had four pounds of makeup on her face and if it would be like that.  Dunno.  But her voice is great!

I guess I could go see her play - not on fire to see her sing a bunch of pop country classics, but nothing else is very interesting during this hour.  We'll see.