SONGBOOK - A COLLECT

Personnel: Trisha Yearwood, Garth Brooks (vocals); Larry Byrom, Mark Casstevens (acoustic guitar); Steve Gibson, Chris Leuzinger (electric guitar); Paul Franklin (lap steel guitar); Bruce Bouton (steel guitar); The Nashville String Machine (strings); Jim Horn (saxophone); Steve Nathan, Matt Rollings, Bobby Wood (keyboards); Mike Chapman, Michael Rhodes (bass); Paul Leim, Milton Sledge (drums); Judson Spence, Carie McDowell, Harry Stinson, Raul Malo, Lari White, Chuck Cannon, Garth Fundis, Don Henley, Kim Richey (background vocals). Producers: Tony Brown, Trisha Yearwood, Garth Fundis, Harry Stinson. Engineers: Jeff Balding, Mark Miller. Includes liner notes by James Hunter. All tracks have been digitally remastered using HDCD technology. "How Do I Live" was nominated for 1998 Grammy for Song Of The Year and won the Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. "In Another's Eyes" won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals and was nominated for Best Country Song. Personnel: Larry Byrom (acoustic guitar); Steve Gibson (electric guitar); Paul Franklin (steel guitar, lap steel guitar); Jim Ed Norman (steel guitar); Jim Horn (saxophone); Matt Rollings, Steve Nathan (keyboards); Paul Leim, Milton Sledge (drums). Audio Mixers: Chuck Ainlay; Jeff Balding; Mark Miller . Liner Note Author: James Hunter . Photographer: Randee Saint Nicholas. Arranger: Ronn Huff. SONGBOOK combines 10 hits from the first part of Yearwood's career (through 1995's THINKIN' ABOUT YOU) with a soundtrack cut ("How Do I Live," from "Con Air") and a new duet with Garth Brooks ("In Another's Eyes"). The album makes a case for Yearwood as one of the finest country singers of the '90s. Yearwood's painfully real portraits of lovers on the ropes are rigorously absent of the standard Nashville tricks. There are no cookie-cutter melodies, no needless swings into honky-tonk nostalgia, no superfluous steel guitars, no emotional resolutions achieved in two perfect verses--just stuff that's real. In "Like We Never Had A Broken Heart" (another duet with Brooks, from her debut album), she tries to patch up a failing affair with a good night of sex, advising her partner, "Pretend I'm someone that you love." The heroine of "XXX's and OOO's" wakes up to this casually brutal world: "Phone rings/Baby cries/TV diet guru lies." Yearwood sings with a matter-of-fact emotion that acknowledges the struggles and the sadness (and occasional bliss) without ever overdoing it. She trusts these songs, and the degree to which she doesn't cry all over them suggests a confidence in the material that's increasingly rare in Nashville.