A Pam kind of morning

Once upon a time, I really did like a lot of country music. Not surprisingly, it was mostly by female artists - Reba McEntire, Faith Hill, Jo Dee Messina, Wynonna Judd. Probably what helped was that by the time I started listening to their music, it was very much country-pop, making it just a little more palatable to me. But at that time when I was listening to all this country, I really got into Pam Tillis. The song that got me listening to Pam Tillis was "Spilled Perfume" which contains the classic country lyric "there's no use crying over spilled perfume."

So this morning, I really got a hankering for Pam. And I've done nothing but listen to her music for the last hour. She's not someone that I really listen to all that much anymore. I pretty much abandoned country music completely right around the year 2000, when it became so completely and utterly associated with Red State America that I pretty much washed my hands of the whole thing with the exception of the Dixie Chicks and of course, First Lady Dolly Parton.

But before then, I managed to amass all of Pam's albums, pretty much within a 1 month time span (yeah, when I get into an artist, I don't mess around.) I think what I loved most about it was her mix of the oh-so-dramatic part of country with the novelty part. I mean, songs like "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" and "Betty's Got A Bass Boat" are great country novelty songs, as well as being good radio singles. Yes, they're incredibly cheesy, but that's part of the draw, at least for me. And someone equating the "don't cry over spilled milk" with spilled perfume, well, it's priceless.

By 2000 or so, I had cooled significantly on Pam, as her last two albums had been sub-par efforts in my opinion. However, I imported them to iTunes this morning and well, they're not as bad as I remember them being. But nothing will ever match the greatness that was the trilogy of albums including Homeward Looking Angel, Sweetheart's Dance, and All of This Love. But perhaps, that's because those were the albums that introduced me to Pam.

And this serves as a great segue into a post I've been formulating about Stevie Nicks. But more on that later.