The Adult Folk World of Shawn Colvin : Pop music: The singer-songwriter writes ‘about what I feel’ and strikes a chord with ‘women who are going through the same thing.’

Many adult women are drawn to singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin’s music. She proudly explained why.

“I write about what I feel and what I’m going through, which may strike a chord with women who are going through the same thing,” said Colvin, who appears on Thursday at the Troubadour.

“I’ve been feeling my way through life and love, staggering here and there and then going on--just like a lot of other women.”

Some of her confessional, introspective contemporary folk material probes various issues from the perspective of a vulnerable woman. Her second Columbia album, “Fat City”--just out--is even better than her 1989 debut, “Steady On,” which won the contemporary folk Grammy.

Without wallowing in misery, Colvin, 36, sings about loving, losing and fighting little day-to-day battles. At times, on songs like “Polaroids” and “Round of Blues,” she covers this emotional turf as skillfully as her idol Joni Mitchell did in the ‘70s.

About five years ago, Colvin discovered that the secret to good writing was simply baring her soul.

“I just stumbled onto it,” said the South Dakota native. “I knew I could sing and play good rhythm guitar, but I didn’t have anything special to offer. But in 1987 this inspiring event happened. I was working on this song called ‘Diamonds in the Rough.’ I decided to change it and write it in a way that was very personal and confessional.

“I stopped trying to be clever and just tried to be honest and put as much of me into the song as possible. Things changed after that. I started writing songs that were good enough to get me a record deal with Columbia.”

One of Colvin’s underlying themes is how a woman maintains some independence and autonomy in today’s world. Men are terrific, she said, but women don’t have to lean on them--a lesson she learned the hard way.

The producer and co-writer of her first album was John Leventhal, her boyfriend through much of the ‘80s. The relationship had disintegrated by the time she started to work on “Fat City.”

“We labored on the record for a month but it was all wrong,” she said. “I was forcing it. I was afraid I was nothing without him. I was clinging. I was hoping that what had worked before would magically work again. It didn’t.”

But it turned out OK. Not only did she find another capable producer, Larry Klein--who also happens to be Joni Mitchell’s husband--but she also found a stronger sense of autonomy.

“I was thinking how women grow up to rely on men and how I had fallen into that trap,” she said. “I struggled to break out of that. The struggle is reflected in some of my writing.”

“Fat City” is a fairly hopeful, amusing album. That’s not the way it started out. “I thought I’d write this caustic record about being single in the ‘90s, because that’s the way I felt,” she said. “My career isolated me because I was traveling all the time. Because of AIDS it’s a dangerous time to be single and sexually active. It meant behavior changes for me.”

So why didn’t the album didn’t turn out caustic?

“I fell in love again,” she said with a laugh. “That changed my perspective.”