SANTA MONICA, CA. (Top40 Charts/ By Shannon Herber/ UMe) - One of the most popular female singers in country music, three-time Grammy Award winner
Trisha Yearwood has epitomized the balance of assertiveness and vulnerability in the genre's modern woman. Nowhere is that more evident than in her greatest love songs, collected for the first time on "Trisha Yearwood - Love Songs" (MCA Nashville/UMe), released January 15, 2008.
Including tracks from each of her nine non-holiday MCA albums, spanning her career from 1991-2005, "Trisha Yearwood - Love Songs" features five Top 10 country hits among 14 selections from the woman who was ranked No 10 on CMT's "40 Greatest Women Of Country Music" in 2002.
Back in 1991, longtime friend Garth Brooks landed a major tour and invited Yearwood to open all of his shows. That exposure helped springboard her "She's In Love With The Boy" to No 1. That song and the Top 10 country "That's What I Like About You" catapulted her self-titled debut album to platinum, marking her as the first female country singer ever to sell one million copies of a debut album. When it sold two million copies, she was the first to reach that milestone as well. All of her MCA albums have been certified at least gold or platinum, and eight more chart-topping singles followed too.
"Trisha Yearwood - Love Songs" continues with the country Top 20 "Down On My Knees," penned by Beth Neilsen Chapman, from 1992's "Hearts In Armor," considered by many critics to be one of the best heartbreak records of its day. The beautiful Rodney Crowell composition "I Don't Fall In Love So Easy," "If I Ain't Got You" and "The Nightingale" originally appeared on 1993's "The Song Remembers When."
Two years later, the title track for "Thinkin' About You" went No 1. 1996's "Everybody Knows" yielded "Maybe It's Love," co-written by Chapman. Having moved from rockin' country to ballads, Yearwood flowed into contemporary pop with 1998's "Where Your Road Leads," which featured the No 6 country charter "Powerful Thing" and the No 10 Diane Warren-penned "I'll Still Love You More." By this point, Yearwood had been named Best Female Performer once by the Academy of Country Music and twice by the Country Music Association.
After being inducted into the famed Grand Ole Opry, she continued to walk the line between country and pop with 2000's "Real Live Woman" and its "One Love" track. "Trisha Yearwood - Love Songs" culls "Love Alone" from her romance-heavy 2001 album "Inside Out." Her final album on the label, 2005's "Jasper County," offers "Baby Don't You Let Go" and the country-soul "Sweet Love."
That same year, Yearwood married superstar Garth Brooks, and a woman who had performed some of modern country's greatest love songs became part of one of its greatest love stories.
