Strong Heart - Release Notes

Release Notes

Recording sessions for the album started in June 1998 and it was originally planned for a spring 1999 release. Initially, Loveless collaborated with Vince Gill in a series of recording sessions, which were produced by Gill. The recordings for the album were finished in November 1998 and they were submitted to Sony/Epic (her label at the time) in early January 1999. However, legal problems were encountered with these recordings that forced the cancellation of the Loveless/Gill collaboration.

As Loveless had not had a release of new material since the 1997 "Long Stretch of Lonesome" album, Loveless and her husband/producer Emory Gordy, Jr. put together a compilation album "Classics", that included the "My Kind of Woman, My Kind of Man" duet that Gill had included on his "The Key" album; along with two new songs, "Can't Get Enough" and "I Just Wanna Be Loved by You", which were songs already licensed by Loveless to record.

During the recording sessions of "Can't Get Enough", several alternative takes were made of the song in a more pop/rock & roll genre which Loveless and Gordy believed came out well. Sensing that country music had moved closer to the pop genre, and seeing the success of artists such as Shania Twain with a sold-out tour and a multimillion-selling album, "Come on Over." Loveless and Gordy went back into the studio in early 2000 with a collection of new material and recorded Strong Heart, which has a decidedly Country pop overtone.

The album was emblematic of country music in 2000. It was a time when the industry was wondering whether excellence and commercialism could go together, as they did in the past. Depending on your point of view, the album is either refreshingly diverse or perilously scattered as it struggles to hit that bull's-eye.

The fan reaction to this album was a decidedly mixed one, which as well as radio saw the album as "too pop", and it was her lowest-selling album since she switched to Epic Records seven years earlier.

The album contains a wide variety of styles, the best of which is the wonderfully bluesy "You Don't Get No More," written by Loveless and her husband-producer Emory Gordy Jr.

The frothy pop of "You're So Cool," the song that invited the Twain comparison. It's got what it takes to become a hit single, but there is an element of desperation in its gimmicky production. The song evokes memories of James Dean, Bob Dylan and other icons of cool to capture the feeling of romantic infatuation. There is some wheezy Dylan-style harmonica (played expertly by Steve Earle) thrown in as a musical joke.

According to Loveless, "...One is a song that Emory and I wrote together called You Don't Get No More.I don't hear it as a single, you know? I could be wrong... but it's fun for me. It's very swampy and has a greasy feel to it-a kind of dirty feel to it. Especially with Mr. Jimmy Hall on harmonica on it. There are a lot of wonderful musicians on her that make it come alive and make it fun: Steuart Smith on guitar, my own keyboard player Mike Rojas who's been out on the road with me, Jerry Douglas and Dan Dugmore on lap steel. We have some great musicians. They give it that swampy feel. It couldn't go any other way. I tell you though, Emory is really responsible for the feel of it because he had this weird tuning going on with his bass guitar and all the other musicians were going, "Man, what are you doing?" and they were all trying to copy his licks.".

"Another song that rocks is The Key of Love, which Emory and Al Anderson wrote. The reason I think that we were going in that direction this time is me. I would play records by a lot of blues artists. I'd play some of Bonnie Raitt and say, 'She's so cool. I'd love to find that little knack they have and merge it into what I'm doing today in country.' That's what I love about Linda Ronstadt, especially the Heart Like a Wheel album. It showed an edgy side of her but then also a country side. They were able to mix it up and I'm all for mixing. i feel like this record, out of all the records I've done, is the most adult one I've done. It's for the adult who's young at heart, like myself. That's what it's all about. Sometimes we look at our age and think, 'Oh, I'm aging. I have to act my age.' No you don't. It's what you feel in your heart. All the songs on this album are what I feel in my heart. The first cut, You're So Cool, is basically about a grown woman who gets a crush. There's nothing wrong with that. We all do still get crushes. I look at Harrison Ford and get a big, huge crush."

The single, "That's the Kind of Mood I'm In," made it to #71 on the Billboard Top Pop Singles chart and #13 on the Top Country Singles chart. The only other song to chart was the #20 Country single "The Last Thing on My Mind."