Lee Ann Womack

Lee Ann Womack had a long, winding journey in country music. Born August 19, 1966 in Jacksonville, Texas, released her first, self-titled album in 1997 on Decca Nashville. She sported a neo-trad country style when the opposite was in vogue, but she nevertheless ended up with a hit straight out of the gate, boosted by two big singles, "The Fool" and "You've Got to Talk to Me." The next year, she put out her follow-up album, Some Things I Know, which sported two more hits, "A Little Past Little Rock" and "I'll Think of a Reason Later." In 2000, Womack shifted her sound from the roots-conscious feel of her former albums to a pop-country crossover approach. The new tilt towards commerciality paid off-she ended up with the biggest album of her career in I Hope You Dance and her biggest single ever with the album's title track. A couple more albums of a similar bent followed, including the Christmas LP, The Season for Romance. But by the time Womack got around to 2003's There's More Where That Came From, she had begun to embrace her roots once more. She scored a Top 10 country hit in the bargain too, with "I May Hate Myself in the Morning." Over the course of her next two albums, she edged increasingly further towards the old-school end of the spectrum, and 2014's The Way I'm Livin' wound up being Womack's first album for an indie label, the stalwart Americana imprint Sugar Hill. Though she wasn't making much hay in the country charts by this point, she was approaching an artistic peak. Womack's 2017 album, The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone, was her most idiosyncratic outing yet, blending classic country, soul, pop, and rock flavors. Tellingly, it was released on indie rock-oriented label ATO Records.