Red Dirt Girl

Very rootsy, very patient. There's a hazy, dusk-on-the-porch glow running through it. Spins: 1 Playlist Additions - Michelangelo - Red Dirt Girl - Bang the Drum Slowly - My Antonia

Ok already know this is going to be a solid 3/tight 4. Love her voice so much. TBH I had only listened to the title track, but opening track The Pearl is a banger.

Emmylou Harris is a marvellous a singer that she doesn't need to be a songwriter. And she is a pleasant enough songwriter too. For every country cliche - "Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard" - there is a startingly precise Springsteenian couplet - "He told her, "Little sister, gonna ride the wind/Up around the moon and back again"/He never got farther than Vietnam." However, it is a shame that her first complete effort as a songwriter - and thus, one might argue, at making a complete artistic statement - is marred by dated production. Its drumloops and open chord droning remind me of nothing more than Sam Phillips mid-90s T-Bone Burnett record, but without the pop charm and irony to carry the dated oraments. 2 ‚Red Dirt Girl‘ is a rather misleading title for the album because it sets expectations around the level of Gretchen Wilson‘s ‚Redneck Woman‘. It’s nothing so horrible as that. Emmylou Harris‘ voice is magnificent and her poetic lyrics are far above the standard cliches of country music. But both are done dirty by tacky production - a miserable swamp of reverbed synths and cheesy U2 delay guitar. The drum loops, when they pop up, are cringeworthy. This may be a half-decent collection of songs but it’s an absolutely stinking record. 1.5/5

Nice. Very slick-sounding haunting country. Maybe too slick for me?

Enjoyed. Mellow.

Emmylou Harris has a lovely vocal style, sometimes raspy country, and sometimes soft and gentle. This album has solid lyrical writing, but the music just doesn't capture my attention the way I hoped it would.

okay

Brilliant

Enjoyed this!

ok

Wow. Very impressed. Surprised this is her first album with song written by her. In an era where country women went pop, she held strong to the folky Americana sound. Crazy how I can hear how Brandi Carlile was influenced by her in this.

Not very special, but it's okay

Очередное унылое женское кантри. Ну сколько можно?

No sticking power. Impressed at the fact it was her 21st studio album

Suena muy bien y todo eso, pero solo me he guardado la canción que da título al disco Red Dirt Girl. Se va a 3 estrellas porque es la nueva base que decidí tras darle 2 al disco innombrable.

Appropriate that this was released under the Nonesuch label, because there is nonesuch a style of music I more want to avoid having to listen to. (1.5)

An interesting production, but it felt a bit grating over time. I’m not familiar with most of Harris’s work, so I come to it without nostalgia, and ultimately leave without any added.

This isn't country music necessarily, so any attempt to characterize it as such would be incorrect. I find it a bit random to have a later-career album from Emmylou Harris, because there are other albums that could be included (in my opinion) along with Pieces of the Sky. What is notable about Red Dirt Girl is she wrote nearly all of the songs herself. I had not ever heard this album but had seen the album cover and title quite a few times over my lifetime. There are drum loops and very clean production which isn't always what I expected to hear from an Emmylou Harris album. I find myself listening to Emmylou Harris's music and enjoying it but on repeated listens becoming more impressed with just how well-written and performed the songs are. It's a tiny bit too clean for me, but it was the 2000's and I guess that's to be expected. Emmylou Harris has never been country enough for some people and too country for others. Even though I'm not a huge fan of latter day albums by an artist, I think many people would get into her music if they heard this album. I guess that's the point, isn't it? My favorite songs: The Pearl Michelangelo I Don't Want to Talk About it Now Red Dirt Girl Bang the Drum Slowly One Big Love Hour of Gold Boy from Tupelo

i’ve already forgotten this album

This was charming. I did not expect Dave Matthews to show up towards the end and that was a good song too. Overall, really enjoyed.

What a voice she has, accompanied by great instruments that makes this a great album!

It was pleasant to listen to but I honestly don't see why anyone would deem this essential listening.

I was really disappointed. I really enjoyed her contributions to the trio album and so I was looking forward to her own stuff. I'm guessing I might like earlier stuff more. This felt so washed out and ordinary to me. It has so many bland 90s/00s style production choices. The band is that kind of indie pop tambourine and electric guitar kind of thing that just undermines any beautiful songwriting that's going on for me. Michaelangelo seems like a great song at its core and maybe the title track. But the arrangements and styling just feel like they suck the joy out of even those. I hope there are more emmylous on here, that they're from earlier in the career and that they match up with my hopes better

Really really loved this one. This is right around the time she started singing with Connor Oberst I think? Would love to know about that story. The only solo work I've heard from her is the 70s stuff. This reminds me of my friend Pierce Pettis who was making folk music around the same time. Very nostalgic for me

Coming off Springsteen this is... Kinda similar. Certainly not cheerful. I'd even describe it as bleak. I'm sure this would reward multiple listens but it didn't grab me.

Country isn’t my thing but this was OK. Enjoyed the duet with Dave Stewart. Heard it before? ❌ Listen again? ❌ Rating out of ten? 3️⃣

Nah.

I was surprised by this- I went in expecting Americana but there were actually a broad mix of genres. It sounded similar to other 90s lillith-fair era female singer/songwriters, which a bit if a country spin. The songs were overall good.

I love how this album has a melancholic sound that really drives you softly and warmly through the different songs, having a lot of cohesion but some variety in it too. This is not amazing, but really pleasant to listen to, as well as a very delicate album. There are some great tracks in here also, even if it is an album that still works pretty well (and even better) as a whole. Although here is nothing outstanding, I can find certain things that grab my attention throughout all the record, making of it not something excellent, and sometimes not too memorable, but great and very enjoyable.

Calming

This was actually a lot better than I feared, occupying slightly bluesier territory than the 70s output I've heard from her so far. ... but is a 2000s Emmylou Harris album really essential listening?! No, not at all!

She has a nice voice but this is not my vibe.

🐐

Sweet, storytelling classic folk/country. Beautifully written and performed. Not something I’d have sought out, not necessarily my jam but enjoyed it overall.

I think i was just having a bad day.

Excellent collection of material bringing Emmylou right up to date

I don't really care for this album, especially on this list. It just doesn't feel like it has real impact or importance to me, although it's overall OK. That said, there were only two songs I really enjoyed. Most of the rest came across as overly-saccharine and generic country. I was planning on rating this 2 stars, but I really don't want to listen to it again and I'm not sure even the two songs I liked are enough to drag it to that level. I'm not sure it belongs on the bottom-rung ranking, but that's where it falls in my personal preference unfortunately. Favorite track(s): "J'ai Fait Tout," "Hour of Gold"

Tempted to download this.

Love this! More folk than country. Emmylou stands the test of time.

Enjoyed this slightly more than her classic album, the sounds were pretty good and her voice is outstanding The songwriting is very true to form and doesn't particularly excite me

I don't know much about Emmylou Harris. I heard her on the Trio album with Dolly and Rondstadt. She has a great voice, no question about it. And the music is perfectly fine. The texts are also good. But it's also not really my kind of jam, it's all a bit flat, and it lacks energy. Not bad, but not great either. A fine album that's pleasant to listen to. It's like eating a meatloaf. You wouldn't order one at a restaurant, but you're happy when your mom makes one. That's how I feel about this album : it's safe and cozy, but it does nothing special.

I am not a huge country fan, but this was pretty good. Feels very turn-of-the-century country. Good listen all around.

Not for me. This is not my style of music. Too quiet and the longs were all about 5 minutes, which is too long for me. Her voice is fine; it's just not for me.

Way better than I was expecting.

This process has gradually warmed me up to country, so i enjoyed this but its not top tier. I prefer the origional stuff and this had a more modern feel which felt incongruous to me. Maybe if id grown up listening to country then a change would be welcome

V long

“drum loops and middle eastern melodies nestle in comfortably next to warm guitar work and Harris' gently wavering voice... a big departure from her rootsy '70s releases.”

This is the version where I’d let the **_Van Lear Rose_ antecedent** breathe a little, because it strengthens the argument rather than merely showing off the connection. There is a peculiar danger in spending decades as one of the great interpreters of other people’s songs. If your working life has consisted of choosing, inhabiting and understanding first-rate writing, what happens when you finally put your own material alongside it? Your internal quality-control department must be terrifying. _Red Dirt Girl_ answers that question emphatically. Emmylou Harris wrote or co-wrote eleven of its twelve songs, and the first thing that strikes me is the precision. “The Pearl” opens the album like some strange Old Testament fable, dense with suffering, faith and endurance. The title track gives us a woman whose possibilities are slowly crushed by ordinary life, without sentimentalising her into a symbol. “Bang the Drum Slowly”, written for Harris’s father, builds a requiem from specific memories rather than generic grief, then ends with her quietly humming “The Last Post”. Harris writes like somebody who has spent years learning exactly how much weight a single image can bear. The more surprising decision is what she does with those songs once she has them. This could easily have been the record where an established country singer finally puts her own writing centre-stage and protects it inside tasteful acoustic arrangements. Instead Harris and producer Malcolm Burn put the songs through the studio playbox. Country remains in the melodic grammar and Harris’s phrasing, but much of the music has been abstracted from it. Loops establish the architecture. Electronics putter, tremble and shudder underneath. Guitars wander around the edges rather than forming a conventional backing band. Piano appears in tiny, exquisitely placed phrases. Voices suddenly pile into a giddy collision. At times the record gets remarkably close to trip hop: not country with electronic decoration so much as country melodicism rebuilt using loop-based production logic. That makes _Red Dirt Girl_ feel, in retrospect, like an antecedent to Loretta Lynn’s _Van Lear Rose_. The records sound very different: Malcolm Burn’s looped dreamwash has little in common with Jack White’s garage-rock attack. But the principle is strikingly similar. An older country artist puts her own writing at the centre and refuses to ask for heritage-industry protection. Neither record treats age as a reason to become sonically conservative. The songs are allowed to live dangerously in the present. The production here often works by accretion. “I Don’t Want to Talk About It Now” moves on a metronomic mechanical shuffle while its narrator remains emotionally stuck. “Tragedy” is built around repetition and accumulation, with delicate piano details appearing inside the murk like a tiny musical box. “My Baby Needs a Shepherd” carries an oblique Irishness in its modal drift and slow, bodhrán-like pulse. “J’ai Fait Tout” barely seems subject to gravity at all: ghostly harmonies suspended over a puttering electronic dreamwash. The remarkable thing is that the performances survive all this meticulousness. Nothing feels embalmed. A less obvious pattern emerges in the writing too. The self Harris repeatedly presents is one of constancy: the keeper of attachment. Children grow beyond protection, parents die, lovers disappoint, people take risks, lives go wrong, and she remains emotionally invested. There is something deeply admirable in that, but the quality is left sufficiently unvarnished that it can also become uncomfortable. Constancy can shade into an inability to let go. From the inside it looks like loyalty; from the other side of the relationship it might sometimes be exhausting. The album does not need to be a concept record for that tension to matter. “Hour of Gold” imagines love as something capable of enduring another person’s danger. “My Antonia” idealises attachment so completely that it can survive distance and death. Yet the final “Boy from Tupelo” finally confronts a relationship whose supposed place of comfort has become cold and empty. Sometimes constancy reaches its limit. I do not want to make that into too neat an album-long arc, because these are individual songs rather than chapters in an argument. What holds the record together more securely is the confidence of the whole enterprise. Harris finally places her own writing at the centre and discovers that it needs neither protection nor apology. These songs are strong enough to withstand dense, adventurous, occasionally difficult production, and the production is imaginative enough to reveal things in them that a safer setting might not. This is not quite an effortless masterpiece. There are moments when its density feels like work rather than revelation. But it earns its ambition. A formidable songwriter emerges from behind one of the great interpretive voices, and chooses the least conservative way imaginable to do it.

This is very sleepy, generic music.

Very good, but Im shocked its not Wrecking Ball?

Very solid country/folk album. Easy to listen to with how soothing Harris' vocal performance is. Goes on a tad too long in my opinion, but there's a lot to enjoy overall. Top tracks: The Pearl, Red Dirt Girl, J'Ai Fait Tout

Didnt expect to like it as much as I do. It's very pleasant, comfortable and a bit melancholic but not to the extend that makes it depressing to listen to. It has a bit of ABBA energy to it which might explain why I feel so positive about it.

A really nice country music album. A good listen, with great and colourful lyrics. Excited for her other albums to come up on the list

It feels disrespectful not to rate this higher because I do really respect Emmylou, but it didn’t click for me the way I wanted to. The title track is a standout, but others just got to sounding the same to me.

Man, I hate to seem dismissive, but was this really a necessary pick for a list like this? Did Emmylou Harris need more albums on this list than Dolly Parton, with one of them being from the year 2000? I don't think that's necessary! I think that's kinda weird. Oh well. At least the album's good. Yeah, I enjoyed this album enough. It's not amazing, but there are things here that I think are pretty good. Emmylou Harris's singing and writing are both nice. There's good emotion here. The production is certainly interesting, and this album does differentiate itself from Harris's earlier work in more modern ways. There are a few "features" of sorts here, including the only appearance on this entire list from Dave Matthews! Kinda surprised there's nothing from his band here, but I also couldn't name any Dave Matthews Band albums myself, so maybe it's not that crazy. Other than that, this is a solid country album, but not one that stands out as some masterpiece or anything like that. It's nice to know that Emmylou Harris still had it in her to make good music in the 21st century, but I don't think that it's an important enough part of music history to represent on this list. Solid 3/5.

I dig this album but I remember loving it a lot more when I first heard it. Red Dirt Girl is an awesome song and I feel like the rest of the songs complement it nicely. I just feel like it's too slow for my taste right now. Great songwriting and amazing voice but for some reason it just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Am I crazy for thinking this sounds a bit like a U2 album? The production is unappealing and the song choice is odd.

Don't even remember

Anything she looks at is solid gold. This is no exception. Spotless from start to finish.

I appreciate that she tried some different things on this, but holy cow is this boring and/or terrible every second of the way. 0.5/5.0

amei

She can sing but it's boring as hell

In this house, we love Americana and we love Emmylou, so it’s no surprise that Red Dirt Girl resonates so deeply with me. Even though it was her nineteenth album, it feels like a total breakthrough since she finally took the lead on the songwriting. She totally moves past typical country vibes here, leaning into this lush, dreamy folk-Americana sound. The production is super atmospheric with lots of cool textures and quiet beats that just wrap around her voice. It’s a bold move that shows she can experiment without losing her roots. The whole listen is just super emotional. Her writing has this heavy, melancholic weight to it, especially on tracks like "Red Dirt Girl" and that gut-wrenching song for her dad, "Bang the Drum Slowly." It’s definitely a slow, reflective burn, but it never drags, it just kind of washes over you but it needs to come with a warning sticker as it has some unadvertised Dave Matthews...

I really wanted to get into Red Dirt Girl, but unfortunately it just didn’t do much for me. It’s a very slow, quiet, and understated album, and after a while I found myself losing interest. The songs all seem to live in a similar mellow, melancholic space, so the album started to feel a bit flat and repetitive. There’s no denying that Emmylou Harris is a great singer, and there are some nice melodies and thoughtful lyrics here. I can also appreciate that the album is clearly very personal and emotional. But for me, the emotional impact just wasn’t there. I never really felt pulled into the stories or connected strongly with the songs. The biggest problem was probably the pacing. Everything moves along at such a measured pace that I kept waiting for something to change—a little more energy, a different arrangement, or a song that would really grab me. Those moments never really came. Instead, the album maintained pretty much the same mood from beginning to end. I don't think it’s a bad album at all. It’s well made, sincere, and Harris sounds great. I can definitely understand why people who enjoy slow, intimate country and folk music would love it. It just wasn’t particularly engaging for me. Overall, Red Dirt Girl felt more like an album I appreciated in theory than one I actually enjoyed listening to. There are some good songs and performances, but the overall experience was just too slow and subdued for my taste. By the end, I was mostly ready to move on to something else.

Okay country music

Lovely, beautiful and feel

978 albums later, and Dave Matthews finally makes an appearance! Even if buried in the depths of an Emmylou Harris album, I’ll take what I can get at this point. It’s a crime such an accomplished artist doesn’t have his OWN album in this list, but whatever! I was excited to hear his voice regardless. I really enjoyed this album. The songwriting is really great and she has beautiful vocal delivery. A touching and soulful journey!

Emmylou’s voice is so badass. I’m kind of enjoying this album because she’s moved away from folk, which I really don’t get much into usually, and it has less of a country flair also. I wish there was more for me to really chew on with this record though. She’s incredible, but I kind of prefer when she’s working with someone. Still, she sings like a daggum angel. 7.5/10

Not really my thing, but I guess it could have been worse. The transition from country to folk is a step forward. Dave Matthews on "My Antonia" was a surprise. Album was fine I suppose.

Granske kjedelig.

- Some haunting tracks here ("Red Dirt Girl"), some more powerful ("J'ai fait tout"), and some more playful ("One Big Love," which starts like a Beck soundscape). However, very little truly stands out. - Like Harris's voice, but a few songs could be ripped straight out of the Christian contemporary scene (and that is not complimentary), such as "The Pearl" or "Bang the Drum Slowly." And no offense to Dave Matthews, but get out of here, man.

Hard not to be moved by Harris' voice, especially alongside production that tucks gorgeous golden guitars into a beguiling bed of y2k electronics. First album on the list to make me cry, which it did several times. Some clunky lyrics in "One Big Love" killed the vibe for a minute, and I was very pleased to learn that it's the only song she didn't (co-)write. Overall though, I loved this! Not sure I'd call it canonical but definitely a hidden gem that I'll return to.

This album is good. Its production quality is obvious. Emmylou Harris has verve. But let’s take a line from the Patty Griffin song One Big Love she covers : Everybody do like a monkey If you want to go on and be funky. See, this kind of nonsense epitomizes my feelings about this sort of project: it cares more for appearance than substance, more for rhyme scheme than meaning. It’s beautiful, but shallow. And that’s tough when it affects my feeling for even the title song, which truly is one of the saddest songs I’ve heard next to Jason Isbell’s Elephant. So that’s a 3. 3 Boolean: True

Number: 248 Familiarity: Aware (2) Rating: 3 ======= It's OK. I'm not much a fan of country music per se but I think if I spent more time listening to this album I might grow to like it more but it's time to move on to the next one. But before I do, let me check my favorites by years lists to see if I have anything by her...nope, not a single song. I'm sure there has go to be something from her that I like enough to include. Maybe I'll look for something after I finish my next album today. I wonder what it will be?

probablemente el mejor álbum de country que haya escuchado hasta la fecha

This is a great album all around. What a voice.

Tragedy is right, this is like the Chicks with post-coke comedown so bad you can't even jack off.

Look Emmylou is a classic but putting on an album for her from 2000 is just not it. 4/10

I'm sorry but you you can't make me like this! It's so boring to me!

A bit sleepy

I love Emmylou Harris’ voice in her older works. This isn’t it. The production is quite dated in my opinion.

OK

A fluid, almost dreamy country album full of songs that luxuriate in their lovely melodies. There's enough twang on these songs to remind you that you're listening to a country album, but there are a lot of other sounds that create an album with a lot of depth. Songs like "Michelangelo" have some incredible imagery, while the groove on songs like "I Don't Want to Talk About It Now" are so good you hope they never end. The album's one downside is that from a writing perspective all of the songs stick to similar formats; the sounds are interesting but once a song starts you kind of know what you're getting. The album is a bit too long for that to not get old, but it's still a great listen.

Country album. Quite a standard one with an aged singer. Guess Country albums don’t need to be stand out to be enjoyable, but it helps. I can see myself enjoying this more if given more time with it.

2 Emmylou albums, I didn’t understand the appeal til I googled her and now I get it….she was hot.

2.3 A bit too much 2000's adult contemporary for me

Please can they give me an interesting country album soon

Easy 2.5 middle of the road. Nothing offensively bad but I can't remember one song from listening to it yesterday.

Sounds about like I expected Emmylou Harris to sound

This was a pleasant listen but kind of forgettable at the same time.

2.25 - Not really my thing, but way better and less country than I expected.

Meh

A pleasant listening experience and not what I was expecting. More of an Americana/Country mix than pure Country which I enjoyed. It was, however, a bit one paced and bar a couple of examples it is difficult to pick out one song from another. I do see the appeal of Emmylou, but not really my cup of tea. 2/5

This was the first album I started to really take notice of Emmylou Harris. I’d just seen her on Lilith Fair, and she was touring with the most skilled and accomplished band I’d seen all day at that festival: They just blew everyone else out of the water.

Long 55 minute album. I chose to walk to the album because I thought that that was going to be the groove and I was right. I probably enjoyed the album more than I would if I was just sitting at home. Maybe some background music but anyway solid three for me

I was excited to get an album from someone I've never heard of and know nothing about. That excitement died pretty quickly when I realised that The Pearl sounds like someone using hold music through a phone as a backing track. I understand that Emmylou Harris has released many albums and this might not be a fair representation of her work as a whole so I will try to keep my bias in check when she next comes up.

Ugh this is just….boring.

beautiful voice but jesus christ it felt like it was never gonna end

Credit where it's due - I was ready to poo-poo this album. I didn't expect this to do anything for me being a folk album by an Alabama-born country artist. I'm very pleasantly surprised though. This is a tender, thoughtful album that doesn't rely on tropes or cheap tricks to carry itself. Emmylou is a fucking dumb name, though.

Nice enough voice, but enough of this country-ish shit. Not worthy of this list.