Trisha Yearwood: Inside Out : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

For the last decade, Trisha Yearwood has never sweated the differences between contemporary and traditional country-music styles. Her Georgia background is as central to her as her voice, an instrument that lusciously intertwines gravitas and light. On Inside Out - named for a Memphis-style soul duet with Don Henley that gets down into some gnarly rhythms - she continues to mix up the past and the present, operating at the top of her game. The best song is "Love Alone," a polished but robust country-rocker about the zing that love can bring. The other best song is "Melancholy Blue," a slow Tom Douglas-Harlan Howard stunner that is a masterpiece of hard-country romantic tragedy. Elsewhere, Yearwood and Wright make a gospel-y love tune, "Second Chance," which is so late-Elvis you wonder which hotel Yearwood is playing at tonight. And yet the track sits perfectly next to songs such as Rosanne Cash's nervy "Seven Year Ache." Inside Out is the kind of recording God created Nashville for.

JAMES HUNTER
(RS 872 - July 5, 2001)