Leann Rimes Better Off Sticking To Country Tunes
LeAnn Rimes “You Light Up My Life: Inspirational Songs” (Curb)
How quickly LeAnn Rimes has shown her true colors.
From the sound of this resolutely uninspired set of “inspirational” songs - when your disc includes a cover of Bette Midler’s “The Rose,” you’re stretching the limit of the word’s meaning - Rimes doesn’t really want to be country music’s next great honky-tonk queen; she wants to be the next squeaky-clean Celine Dion.
No one wants to take potshots at someone whose talent is still so nebulous. But rushing this half-sacred, half-secular and all-awful set into stores to keep LeAnn fever rolling is worth disparaging no matter how much she has yet to learn. That it negates through atrocious song selection and mind-numbingly vapid arrangements what Southern charm Rimes exuded on her debut, “Blue,” only gives further reason to be venomous.
Rimes has a lot to apologize for with her next effort (which is still being considered the true follow-up to “Blue”; this is merely a layover). She (and, more likely, her production team) is going to have to make up for turning “God Bless America” into what sounds like background filler for a Ford truck commercial, and she’ll have to beg forgiveness for even thinking of reviving the nails-on-chalkboard torpidity that is Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life,” much less remaking the thing note-for-bloody-note.
Not to mention that, excepting “Clinging to a Saving Hand,” nothing here sounds particularly Nashville-influenced. It’s mostly territory best covered by the Whitneys of the world.
Most of all, though, Rimes has to apologize for desecrating one of the few truly pure songs of the century, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Rimes and company have stripped the Simon & Garfunkel classic of any passion or angelic overtones, leaving flatly polished gloss in its absence. (Matter of fact, that might take two or three expert follow-ups to forgive.)
Yes, Rimes has an able voice, even if she doesn’t know what to do with it. (She goes berserk on a cappella versions of “Amazing Grace” and the national anthem here.) And yes, it’s unfair to write her off because of one flop.
Still, this is a big flop. LeAnn better watch it - she’s on thin ice.