| Her mother was 16 when she had her, and her father moved on when she was two. By the age of 15, with a double-barrel shotgun always at the ready, she was managing a kicker bar in rural Illinois where the corn fields meet the pig farms. That gave Gretchen Wilson something to sing about, with attitude in spades. "You might think I'm trashy, a little too hardcore," she admits on the smash single "Redneck Woman," "but in my neck of the woods I'm just the girl next door." Wilson, already the toast of Nashville before this full-length debut hit the shelves, isn't just putting the trailer park back into country music--she's the antidote to Shania and Faith. Nothing here sounds manufactured or studied, and the best songs are those she wrote. If most of those spotlight the fightin' side that has ma... |
