Red Dirt Girl

Title track is great and she's a super singer but there was something off about this record for me. Some of the 2000s production isn't suiting the songs best. A few good songs here but this was more of a disappointment then I hoped 5/10

Between a 2 and 3, but I'll be nice and give it a 3. There was enough I liked to warrant that.

The first thing that struck me was that most of these tracks sound really low fidelity, I don't know what's going on there. Also I am sorry to say I find the songs themselves very samey and boring. The only other thought that crossed my mind while listening was that Michaelangelo is lyrically reminiscent of Bob Dylan. Overall, vaguely sad songs that would work well as soundtrack material where the main character (woman from southern USA) makes a resolution to make a change and take control of her life, becoming her truest and best self.

This was a nice listen. It didn't blow me away or feel like it was really pushing a new sound in any way, but Emmylou Harris is always pleasant to listen to on a rainy morning.

liked 2 songs off this but mostly not really my style

I remember circa 2020, all the artsy people in my rural Ohio school would namedrop Emmylou Harris as their favorite musician or biggest inspiration. Having only heard the older, more straightforward country stuff, I always thought ‘what bumpkins!’ Now I feel like I have to eat my words. If this album was what people were referring to, I think they were right. Emmylou strikes me as a Bob Dylan figure in this. We have references galore which always land. The whimsy of, say, My Antonia, was almost more medieval fairytale song, even if it (I’m guessing) is riffing off the Willa Cather novel.

Not my cup of tea

This one is on me. For whatever reason country is a huge blind spot and there are some types that I’ll never enjoy. I can tell that this album is pushing country and Harris’ career in a different direction. I can respect that and recognize the talent, but this wasn’t an enjoyable listen.

I liked it. 3.4

3.3/5.

I have a soft spot for Emmylou Harris as she was played a lot by my parents growing up. I like her voice and this album has a chilled relaxing quality to it. Would definitely listen to it again.

3.5 Beautiful record.

Evil Brian wants to give this a 1, but tranquil Brian has won the battle today. This is not good. Very uninspired, boring, and surprisingly dated. But it's not completely irredeemable. Clearly Emmylou Harris is a good musician and songwriter. This is just really not the best showing of it. Fave tracks: - I Don't Wanna Talk About It Now - J'ai fait tout - Boy from Tupelo

fun i liked it

Yawn.

One of the few albums youtube didnt let me hear. Thankfully its country and I most likely wouldnt like it as Im not a hige fan of her. No comment

I really liked how genre-bending this album was. It was a little country, a little folk, a little rock. It also had some alternative notes. I also found the lyrics to be full of emotional depth and complexity.

Just a simple country girl singin simple country songs. Pretty boring overall

Great voice. Very talented. But the music wasn’t for me. I did like the last song on the album the best.

A little dull and sort of like listening to a blurry picture, but the sound is interesting. If Massive Attack got stale and went country and then made their album in an empty airport... not enough to feel particularly compelling to hear, though

Amazing album, took me a minute to settle in with the production and vibe, but as it went on a liked it more and more. This is a slow burn, I think will get better on re listens.

Crossing rock, country, and folk boundaries with an excellent voice and lyrics.

Love the dark, gritty production on this one with the guitar feedback and synths. It suits these songs which are personal and heartfelt like the title track and "Bang the Drum Slowly." I might have chosen the album Wrecking Ball over this one for a later period Emmylou album. But this one has more of her own songs and is really good in its own right. My favorite on this is "I Don't Wanna Talk About It Now," a song that compares being in love to addiction. This is a dark, beautiful album that is right up there with her best.

Was surprised to read that this is the first of Emmylou's albums where she wrote most of the songs. She has a knack for it, just as comfortable with biblical imagery as the country settings you might expect. This feels a little uneven for me, with some standout tracks, especially the title track and the closer Boy from Tupelo. Liked the Dave Matthews duet too. But others kind of came and went and found them a little bland. Probably one that would benefit from repeat listens

Listen a few songs. And figured everything was the same. Don't really like this kind of music.

I don’t know. Maybe I came into this with too many expectations but I’ve had so much fun with Emmylou Harris albums in the past. I kept waiting for at least one fun track but it never came. It was beautiful song writing but maybe just a bit too much of a downer for me to really love.

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.

Very nice

ні це якісь Техас ні

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.

# Album Name: Red Dirt Girl # Artist: Emmylou Harris # Rating: 1/5 # Comments: Nice voice but boring album which is way too long # Top Tunes: # Would I listen to it again? No

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.

This is not what I expected and initially I wasn’t the biggest fan but it really grew on me. It comes off as an honest, meditative reflection on life that would fall flat coming from a younger Emmylou. 3.5

Nice late career project from one of our finer country artists

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.

A timeless voice meets a very time-specific sound. 2.5

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

3.33 Stars out of 5 for Emmylou. This is a very different sound for Emmylou. I was not expecting it. Emmylou has a beautiful voice and it shines through on the opening track Pearl and it carries through the entire album. The subtle, darkish background guitar on songs like Michelangelo are welcome and different. In a ways, it sounds like Emmylou wants to bring a grittier side, but in the end it still sounds like country folk with Americana sprinkled in. Bang the Drum Slowly is a great song, and should be worth the listen of this album alone.

i’ve already forgotten this album

в целом впечатление положительное, слушалось нормально, но ничего не сохранил.

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