Suzy Bogguss Goes With the Flow : Country music: The singer, who appears at the Crazy Horse tonight, says her personal feelings dictate song selection--not commercial potential.

Among all those clever but silly country hits concerning achy breaky hearts and old flames with new names, Suzy Bogguss’ potent versions of such substantial songs as Nanci Griffith’s “Outbound Plane” and Ian Tyson’s “Someday Soon” stand out like a turkey dinner in a doughnut shop.

Over the course of three albums, Bogguss, who will play the Crazy Horse tonight, has established a reputation as a particularly thoughtful singer with impeccable taste in material.

Her third album, “Aces,” which has already generated four hits including the title cut, has proved to be the breakthrough that has vaulted her from opening act to headliner.

During a recent phone conversation from a tour stop in Sheridan, Wyo., Bogguss explained how carefully she selects the songs that appear on her albums.

“I try to find material that has more to do with who I am than what is currently the trend in Nashville,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll hear a song and know that it’s a commercial smash, and sometimes I’ll even record it, but if it comes off in the least bit as though it is contrived, then I’ll have to ditch it.

“The big thing is that the song just has to have something to do with me. If I get done recording and I can feel that I wasn’t connected with the song, I don’t care if everybody says that it is a stone smash and that I sung it great. I can feel if the emotion is not genuine. If I go into one of my autopilot voices, then I know the song has to go.”

Bogguss admitted that she has axed such songs as “Where’ve You Been,” which won a Grammy award for Kathy Mattea in 1991, and “Bing Bang Boom” which became a big hit for Highway 101. But she explained that, besides being able to relate to a number, she must also feel that it fits into a particular album.

“It all comes down to whatever strange concept I have in my head when I’m putting an album together,” she said.

“For instance, on the album ‘Aces,’ I picked the song ‘Aces’ and another song called ‘Let Goodby Hurt’ to record because I felt really strongly about those songs. Then I started to build around that nucleus. I was looking for songs that had some of that stream-of-consciousness trait to them, things that didn’t sound fabricated, that had more of a natural feel to them.”

A rabid music fan herself, Bogguss said she hopes to make albums that will have the coherence of her own favorites such as Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like a Wheel” and “Hasten Down the Wind,” Emmylou Harris’ “Pieces of the Sky” and James Taylor’s “Flag.”

“I’ve been a humongous fan,” she said. “I have a huge record collection myself. The albums that have really set with me for years on end are the albums that I have felt were really carefully put together including the sequence of the album.

“I don’t always love an album the first time I hear it, but I usually get a feeling for whether it gives me the right flow. If it does that for me, if it takes me all the way through the album like a little story, then most likely I’ll listen to it six or seven more times which will usually draw me into it and I’ll go mad for it.

“If the first two or three times I listen to it, I don’t get some kind of flow from the album, then I’ll usually just put it away. As a listener myself, I’ve tried to make my records like the ones that most impressed me.”

With the success of “Aces,” Bogguss’ attention to quality has finally paid off. The album represents somewhat of a revival of her career. Bogguss started off like a bolt of lightning when she won the Academy of Country Music’s Best New Female Vocalist award in 1988 on the strength of one single, her version of Merle Haggard’s “Somewhere Between.”

In addition to that title cut, Bogguss’ debut album spawned another hit with “Cross My Broken Heart.” But her sophomore album, “Moment of Truth,” failed to build on the success of its predecessor.

“The award was almost like a little false start for me,” Bogguss recalled. “It wasn’t very long after the first album that my record label (Capitol) totally changed hands. They fired everybody in the building but two people. I had to pretty much start over with the new folks. . . . It was a little tough on me because I felt that I had already paid a lot of dues to get to the place where I had some priority with the label. It took me a little while to get my confidence back.”

Unfortunately, “Moment of Truth” got lost in the shuffle. “They only took one single off of that album,” Bogguss said. “They decided that it just wasn’t strong enough to continue to promote it. That was a weird feeling that really shook my confidence.”

Bogguss co-produced “Moment of Truth” with Capitol Nashville top executive Jimmy Bowen. She feels that the record may have suffered from the process of the two of them learning to work together.

“We’d only known each other for a very short time when we went into the studio,” she said. “We were kind of stepping around each other. I sang a couple of songs on that record because I felt he really wanted me to sing them. I also sang some songs that he did not want me to sing.

“It was one of those things where there was a little bit of friction and, believe it or not, that stuff somehow gets onto the record. Although I think the record is good, it was not what I wanted to make.

“So then when I went back in to make ‘Aces,’ I was absolutely claws out. There was no way I was going to fall into the black hole of music. I’d had that little taste of success, and I’ll be damned if I was going to fade off and go back to singing Holiday Inns.”

As “Aces” began to come together, Bogguss found that she could be content, independent of the album’s success.

“It was like it didn’t even matter what was going to happen with it. The music became so much more important to me than any of the politics,” she said. “That has been an attitude that I have carried on. It was like a big turning point for me. I was in a survivalist mode, but at the same time, because I was so intent on the music and determined to make this great record, I ended up having some of the most creative things that have ever come to me.

“From that time on I’ve never felt I had to second-guess myself.”

Suzy Bogguss performs tonight at 7 and 10 at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana. Tickets are $24.50. Both shows are SOLD OUT. (714) 549-1512.