LeAnn Rimes Talks ‘Lady & Gentlemen’
LeAnn Rimes plays homage to her heroes (and country music royalty) with her new album, Lady & Gentlemen, which hit stores on Tuesday. The album features eleven covers of country classics originally performed by male recording artists, two new original tracks and a re-recording of Rimes’ iconic hit “Blue.”
CountryMusicIsLove recently caught up with the GRAMMY-winning singer to discuss the album and the story behind the unique concept of Lady & Gentlemen. Rimes tells us the idea for the album “happened very organically.”
“It was one of those like ‘Ah-ha! Oh wow, this could be a kind of cool’ moments,” Rimes tells CountryMusicIsLove. “My friend Darrell Brown, who was one of the co-producers of the record, was talking to me about doing my favorite love songs, a kind of old-school country record, and I go, ‘Well you know that’s been done so many times.'”
Because many artists have already done albums full of classic country “cover” songs, LeAnn challenged herself to make her album unique.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do it, I need to do it in an interesting way, with a true concept and it be really thought out,'” she recalls. “I started digging into my favorite love songs, and I realized that they really were all men songs from that time because my dad raised me on classic country music. So, other than Patsy Cline, who my dad loved, that was the only woman I listened to. Everyone else was men. So I thought, ‘well, this could be kind of be interesting if I cut the love songs part of it out, and just do an album that all the songs were originally recorded by men, but now from a woman’s perspective.'”
While she wanted her version of the songs to standout, it was also important to her to pay tribute to the original tracks.
“Some of these songs women have never cut before, period. And from a woman’s point of view, which is a different, soulful approach. I mean, it takes on a whole different connotation. We paid homage to the originals, but I definitely wanted to make it my own so that it sounded new, fresh, and different.”
Going into the recording process, Rimes started out with “about 75 songs” and with the help of producers Darrell Brown and Vince Gill, she was able to narrow it down and select the right songs for her and for this album.
“Especially since my last album was four years ago, I feel like I’m kind of trying to tell a story,” she continues. “It’s almost like a film through the whole thing and you really want to move people and so it was kind of finding those songs that meant something to me, that I was emotionally connected to, that I grew up on. I’ve been blessed with the gift to sing, but to me the most important thing in this day and age is to connect with people. And I think these songs obviously connected at one point in time long ago. And then to make them my own in a way and to bring it to a new generation of fans, and also bring it back to people who grew up on these songs, was super important. It was important that I felt everything that I sang.”
Critics are raving about Lady & Gentleman- so much so that LeAnn tweeted her excitement saying, “I think this is the best reviewed album I’ve ever had…..18 years after it all began.”
Fans can catch LeAnn today on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Lady & Gentlemen is available for purchase HERE
