Trisha Yearwood

Tricia had a dream, and by 1985 she was in Nashville pursuing it--studying "music business," as her bio says, at Belmont College. An internship and some demo singing later, she had signed with MCA, where she now epitomizes the blandness of today's quality country. Not that she's bad or anything. Her voice is big and precise, and she ends up with a good song or two on every album--including this one, where she doesn't ruin strong titles by Kevin Welch and Steve Goodman and brings off a terrific Matraca Berg line about chocolate and magazines. But if songwriters love her so much, it must be because she brings nothing to the song but what they put there. The same cannot be said of Willie Nelson, George Jones, Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks--even Shania Twain. In pop music, good taste isn't timeless. It's boring. (Grade: B)