Word: leann
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...LeAnn Rimes, the country singing sensation, has a surprisingly firm handshake for a 14-year-old girl. We're not talking a G.I. Joe kung fu grip, but her handclasp, by way of greeting, is strong, confident and direct. When she has hold of your hand, you know...
Wilbur recalls that LeAnn started singing songs like Jesus Loves Me and You Are My Sunshine when she was just 18 months old. He says even then, unlike most infants (and, frankly, many adults), she could "carry a pitch.'' "I've got it on tape," he says, in case there are any disbelievers out there. Says LeAnn: "[The tapes are] really funny because you can understand what I'm saying when I'm singing, but when I'm talking, you can't understand a word...
Early on, Wilbur began entering her in local song-and-dance competitions. When she was eight, he had her cut a record to give her the feel and experience of being in a studio; at 10 she had another practice session; and then at 11 LeAnn recorded a demo that the family sent to Curb Records, a small company in Nashville, Tennessee, that promptly signed her to a recording deal. About a year later, the title song for her first album, Blue, propelled the youngster to the top of the country charts and onto the fast track to stardom...
...familiar, if not shopworn, names were on the list, including Bryan Adams, Sheryl Crow and Journey. There were also, thankfully, some fresh, exciting names--the Haitian-American hip-hop band the Fugees certainly deserved their nomination in the Album of the Year category, as teenage country crooner LeAnn Rimes did hers for Best New Artist. But one name stood out from all the others. Or rather, kind of leaned against the wall, looking cooler than everyone else in the vicinity in a throwback to James Dean. That name was Beck Hansen, the folk/hip-hop/punk rocker who was nominated in three categories...
...show, Always...Patsy Cline, played for two years in Nashville, Tennessee. The star of Always, Mandy Barnett, has just released her own album of Cline-inflected tunes. And for weeks the hottest country CD on Billboard's pop charts has been Blue, in which 13-year-old Texas phenom LeAnn Rimes does similarly in-Clined material, including the title song, which was written originally for the dead star. There's musical multiplicity in the country air: the invasion of the Patsy Clones...