7 Emmylou Harris

Red Dirt Girl

NONESUCH 2000, £15.22 You Say: “Shows what a remarkable songwriter she is, as well as being an interpreter par excellence.” Cath Berry, via e-mail After Wrecking Ball, the late singer-songwriter Guy Clark issued Harris a friendly ultimatum: “You need to write your next record, and I don’t care if it takes you five years.” It took four. Regular producer Daniel Lanois wasn’t around, but the production retained much of his reverb-laden shimmer. Michelangelo is a remarkable piece about Parsons; the title track is a pretty-much-perfect portrait of an everyday life blighted by the Vietnam War and hardscrabble poverty, set in an Alabama backwater. Of all the albums in her canon, this one probably gives the clearest sense of who Emmylou Harris is, and what defines her creative universe.