A Clear Voice

Mandy Barnett has unusual tastes for a 23-year-old singer. Most young vocalists aspiring to country stardom would likely model themselves after Shania Twain, or Deana Carter, or Mary Chapin Carpenter. But Barnett’s influences are much older and deeper—those musicians who form the bedrock of American popular music. One of her favorite albums is a 1960s collection by Ella Fitzgerald titled Misty Blue. On it, the late jazz great interprets several contemporary country and soul hits, giving an orchestrated sophistication to down-home Southern tunes like “Don’t Touch Me,” “Evil on Your Mind,” and “The Chokin’ Kind.” When Barnett describes the album she’s always wanted to create, she refers to that Fitzgerald collection.

“I think a lot of old pop standards parallel country songs in a lot of ways,” says Barnett, who grew up listening to her grandmother’s Sarah Vaughan LPs and her mother’s Ray Price and Webb Pierce albums. “Besides being absolutely gorgeous, those records emphasize melody and lyrics. They’re constructed the same way good country songs are. It’s about simplicity and understatement.”

Barnett has already spent a decade battling with Music Row executives over her musical direction. But after so many years of frustration, she finally got to make the record she wanted to make with her recently released Sire Records album, I’ve Got a Right to Cry. Loaded with lushly orchestrated ballads and elegantly swinging mid-tempo tunes, the album, her second, fulfills the vision she’s carried for years.

“This is it,” says Barnett. “This is the ultimate for me. This is what I want to do, what I’ve always wanted to do.”

Now, however, Barnett faces perhaps an even tougher battle. Despite the success of LeAnn Rimes’ “Blue,” which shares some of the torchy qualities of Barnett’s ballads, I’ve Got a Right to Cry clearly doesn’t adhere to current radio trends. And so far, signs are that the album isn’t likely to be embraced by country radio.

Thus Barnett’s album will provide a litmus test of sorts: Will the country music world ignore what is shaping up to be one of the most critically acclaimed country music albums of the year, with rave reviews already coming from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and such disparate publications as People and No Depression?

More to the point, why would country radio—that all-powerful media outlet that has the power to make or break an artist—reject an undeniably talented country singer who has been embraced by Hollywood film producers and TV booking agents? Already, Barnett has received strong support from mainstream television shows such as Late Night With David Letterman (which put her on the air the day after her album was released) and The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (which will feature her on May 18).

Indeed, the only people snubbing the album so far are those in charge of the country music airwaves. That poses an intriguing question: What will it take for Music Row and the all-important radio programmers to take notice of such an astounding talent? Will she first have to find success in the pop mainstream, or even the pop underground? Should she give up on country radio, or hold out hope that commercial country music just might enter some kind of creative renaissance?

Barnett has been heading for this type of showdown for some time. I’ve Got a Right to Cry is the culmination of a story that began 10 years ago, when, as a prodigiously gifted 13-year-old, she earned her first major-label recording contract. Since then, she has openly fought with various record industry executives as she has struggled to step outside the usual Music Row factory line and make distinctive, personal music.

The last decade has included tenures at Capitol Records and Asylum Records, both of which led to unhappy compromises. Years of recording resulted in only one album release, 1996’s Mandy Barnett on Asylum, which received some critical acclaim but little radio support.

Barnett doesn’t view her time at Capitol and Asylum as a complete waste. She gained valuable recording studio experience, she says, and an education in how the music industry works. In the midst of all that, she also spent two rewarding years performing the songs of one of her idols in the highly successful musical Always...Patsy Cline.

At times, however, her devotion to an out-of-fashion sound threatened to end her career before she got a fair shot at proving herself. But then she attracted two unlikely allies: Owen Bradley, the famed 81-year-old Music Row producer who had long been in retirement, and Seymour Stein, the respected 57-year-old rock industry maverick known for gambling on unusual talent.

When Bradley agreed to work with Barnett, he consummated one of her long-standing dreams. “Doing this record was really going full circle for me,” she says. Two of the songs she learned as a child—Cline’s “Crazy” and Brenda Lee’s “Break It to Me Gently”—were produced by Bradley. “Before I ever knew his name, I loved his music,” she admits.