Jessica Simpson proves she’s one of the smartest cookies in music with her country crossover album “Do You Know.”
Seriously.
Country music has become one of the strongest sellers in the business, with a huge national audience. But the next generation of artists has been surprisingly scarce, with former “American Idol” stars Carrie Underwood and Kelly Pickler making the biggest waves.
Simpson saw the vacuum in Nashville and stepped up.
Hate her because she’s beautiful, or because her breathy, over-produced CD catalog is vapid fluff – or because she’s more of a pop culture icon than a pop music icon. Just don’t hate her for this record.
For the first time in her career she’s created an album where she consistently shows off her full-bodied voice with solid, yet simple tunes that don’t overthink the music.
Chalk this reinvention up to the ’05 film “The Dukes of Hazzard,” where she played the backwoods babe Daisy Duke. While the film flopped, she was stupendous in short-short cutoff jeans. More importantly, she got to know her co-star Willie Nelson, who encouraged her to sing some country. To please Uncle Willie, she covered “These Boots Are Made for Walking” for the soundtrack and turned the country-tinged version into one of her biggest hits.
In the footsteps of “Boots,” this record comes on hard with a country rocker “Come On Over” that has lusty urgency. If you didn’t know this was Simpson singing, you’d mistake it for a Melissa Etheridge effort.
In fact, Simpson co-wrote that one – and seven others on this 11-song album. Maybe because she had a hand in writing the music this album has an honesty that her work as a pop tart always lacked.
In one of the simpler songs she wrote, called “You’re My Sunday” (she has said it’s dedicated to her Dallas Cowboy quarterback boyfriend Tony Romo), Simpson has real warmth in her voice.
No doubt this album is going be compared to the records of Underwood (who used to date Romo). Both also enlisted help from Nashville songsmith Hillary Lindsey.
The top-shelf writer certainly helped, but where Simpson got real home-fried country cred is from Dolly Parton – another so-called dumb blonde who’s dominated Nashville for 40 years. Parton wrote the title track and duets with her. You can’t get a better endorsement in country. “Do You Know” is the CD’s best song and the one that is bound to earn her a country Grammy in February.
“DO YOU KNOW”