She’s had five #1 singles, sold millions of records, won the
Academy of Country Music’s Top Female Vocalist Award and
claimed a Country Music Association trophy for her signature song,
“Born To Fly.” It’s tough to imagine many accomplishments Sara
Evans hasn’t already checked off her bucket list.
And yet, with the release of her eighth studio album, Words
demonstrates that she’s still willing to leap into the unknown, taking
greater control of her career and calling the shots in a way that’s
unusual in country music – particularly unusual for a woman in the
genre.
Words is the first project on Evans’ own label: Born To Fly
Records, appropriately named after that CMA-winning signature
song, which celebrated risk and adventure. Much is familiar about
Words. Evans’ voice is warm and strong, the songs are authentic
and memorable, and the actual words themselves resonate with the
realities of everyday life.
But the album was an eye-opening experience for Evans as
a creative force. As the head of her own small, flexible company,
she was able to take a streamlined approach to building it. Instead
of subjecting the music to multiple departments, each with their
own view of one part of her career, Evans approached it with an
instinctual, gut-level focus on making a project that represents the
2017 version of Sara Evans.
“The only thing I had on my mind with this album is just Grammylevel
songs and the coolest music that I can find,” she says. “I didn’t
really go about it in any other way. I wasn’t catering to any part of
the business. There was never a thought in my head of ‘Will this
work on country radio?’ So what has happened with the music is
that it is still very much Sara Evans music. It’s just a little bit deeper
than I’ve gone in the past.”
There’s an irony there – part of the reason that Sara Evans is
one of country’s iconic modern singers is that her music has worked
so well on country radio, at concert halls and amphitheaters, and
in fans’ personal playlists. And the music she’s made to date is
authentically her. But where “Born To Fly” narrowed the crowd of
voices around her, Words is distinctively Sara Evans. For a woman
who always tackled the music her own way, the new album is 100%
her own.
It’s a big reason that the album is titled Words. The songs
generate a number of words – flexible, commanding, sassy, daring,
loving, hopeful, resilient – that all embody parts of Evans’ inimitable
persona.