Shelby Lynne won the Best New Artist Grammy in 2001, the year she released her best album, I Am Shelby Lynne.
Lynne had released five albums prior to this one, and had been recording for more than a decade. The criteria for the Best New Artist awards is this: “For a new artist who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording which establishes the public identity of that artist.”
That’s a pretty subjective criteria. Lynne received the Academy of Country Music award for Top New Female Vocalist in 1990… wouldn’t that count as establishing a public identity? Her first five albums all landed on the U.S. Country chart.
Given that I Am Shelby Lynne has much more of a blues/jazz/soul sound, I guess the Best New Artist award says more about the Grammys disinterest in country artists than anything else.
At any rate, this is a great album.
Reality has hit home hard
No need in puttin’ it off anymore
Just turn away and let me walk
Out the door
You thought you had it all figured out
But baby, you don’t know what love’s about
It’s time for me to spend some time alone
I’m tired of trying to make
This your happy home
(Hurts) I’m leavin’
(Sad) This time it’s for good
You should have treated me
The way you said you would
(Hurts) I’m leavin’
(Sad) And you can’t make me stay
I’m tired of hurtin’ you
This ain’t no good anyway
I’m leavin’
I know it’s gonna be hard on ya
Once it really hits you that I’m gone
I spent too much time
Trying to make things right
When I really knew all along
You’ll be O.K. in time baby
But it won’t be today
As you walk around and
Try to find yourself
Take a look at the bed you made
Meet Me In Montauk 
Yeah, that’s an amorphous criteria. I get that it should allow for artists who have made recordings that went nowhere. Probably a better criteria would be that no previous recording sold more than x number of copies or reached higher than 100 on a billboard chart.