Brandy Clark Sings Her Own 'Stories'

Rebroadcast From October 9, 2013

Brandy Clark is the songwriter behind some of country's biggest recent hits. She's got her own album now. It's dark, funny, heartfelt, and she shares it with us.

Country music, for a long time, had no problem with the hard, real, nitty-gritty truths of life.  Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn and a whole lot of others would go to the tough stuff, the authentic, even when it wasn’t pretty, when it put the soul on trial.  Lately, there’s a whole lot more moonlight and muscle shirts at the top of the country charts.  Sun tans and catfish and big trucks.  American bravado.  Singer-song-writer Brandy Clark can make you jump and smile.  But she goes dark, too.  Real.  Up next On Point:  Brandy Clark and her debut album, “12 Stories”.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Brandy Clark, country singer-songwriter. Her debut solo album is "12 Stories." (@TheBrandyClark)

Vulture: Rosen: Brandy Clark’s "12 Stories" Is My Favorite Album of 2013 -- "Musically speaking, Clark is a classicist: Her songs are models of fine Music Row handicraft, built from time-tested materials. She’s a brisk, vivid, witty storyteller; her tunes unfold in old-fashioned weepers and chugging honkytonk, with fiddles, pedal steel, and vocal harmonies driving home the punch lines and pathos. Clark is an excellent singer, with a voice that slides easily between songbird prettinesss and hard-drawlin’ twang."

XOJane: Drinking, Divorce And Gettin' High: Brandy Clark Wrote The Best Country Album Of the Year, But Is It Too Hot For Nashville? --"A songwriter for 10 years whose tracks have been recorded by the likes of Miranda Lambert and Reba McEntire, the songs on Clark's debut album are largely the songs that no one else was willing to record, due to their subject matter which includes drugs, violence, infidelity and divorce. 'Take a Little Pill,' her song about prescription drug abuse and addiction, is one she says 'everybody loved, but nobody would record.'"

NPR: Country Music's Year Of the Woman -- "Last May, the astute critic Jewly Hight noticed that while men like Jason Aldean and Kenny Chesney still dominated commercial country, a new cohort of female artists had begun to take possession of country's most hallowed sounds and subject matter. 'We're hearing women working with traditional country sounds while they sing about staking claim to personal freedom and demanding equal footing in relationships,' Hight wrote."