Tag Archives: Lucinda Williams

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Song of the Day #965: ‘Jackson’ – Lucinda Williams

I feel like I’ve mentioned Lucinda Williams’ 1998 Car Wheels On a Gravel Road about a thousand times on this blog. So I checked and the actual number is thirteen (not counting today). This is another of my desert island discs and one I can’t help but reference frequently.

That’s because it does so much right in so many different ways. It rocks awfully damn hard but also contains moments of great tenderness. It is filled with simple but profound story songs, such as the title track’s childhood reminiscence of an early morning car ride or a woman stripping down to wait for her lover in bed (in opening track ‘Right on Time’).

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Song of the Day #950: ‘Essence’ – Lucinda Williams

I’m very excited. I got an email the other day advertising a pre-order sale of the new Lucinda Williams album, Blessed. It’s due out on March 1.

This will be Williams’ fifth album in ten years, which is pretty impressive for a woman who put out only four albums in the 20 years prior to that.

Around the turn of the millennium, she shook off the perfectionism that made her spend 6 years on Car Wheels On a Gravel Road and started churning out records that were rougher around the edges.

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Song of the Day #887: ‘Get Right With God’ – Lucinda Williams

Next up in my theme week on religious faith is Lucinda Williams’ ‘Get Right With God,’ the lone upbeat track on her emotional 2002 album Essence.

Yesterday’s track was about doubting god… today’s is the polar opposite.

Williams was inspired to write this song by the displays of evangelical belief she saw around her growing up in Louisiana. The sort of people who believe in an inerrant Bible and are willing to take up snakes to prove their faith.

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Song of the Day #290: ‘Little Rock Star’ – Lucinda Williams

littlehoneySadly, the draconian Warner Music Group decision to pull all their content from YouTube has forced me to skip over Lucinda Williams’ next two albums — World Without Tears and West — and straight to her latest release, Little Honey. I really hope WMG pulls its head out of its ass and realizes that they’re doing nothing but losing free advertising and generating a lot of ill will.

World Without Tears came just two years after Essence and was Williams’ most ambitious record yet. She rocked harder than ever on the album and explored talking blues (bordering on rap) on a couple of tunes. She also delivered her rawest lyrics yet… miles away from the sweet acoustic love songs of 20+ years earlier.

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Song of the Day #289: ‘Blue’ – Lucinda Williams

essenceCar Wheels on a Gravel Road was a tough act to follow and Williams responded by going a whole new direction on her next release, Essence, released a relatively short (by her standards) two years later.

Essence eschewed the country rock and blues style of her earlier albums in exchange for a jazzier sound while the very specific lyrical content of previous songs was replaced by more abstract mood pieces. This is the album that suddenly made Lucinda Williams impossible to pin down in a single genre.

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