Loveless Is Back, With a ‘Strong Heart’

A Nashville music business executive asked Patty Loveless if a song on her new “Strong Heart” album is “too Shania.”

“Excuse me!” the singer howled while telling the tale.

Long before pop-country diva Shania Twain hit the scene in 1995, Loveless--who began singing as a child and later paid her dues singing in rough rock clubs--had made it as a full-fledged Nashville star.

Usually reticent, she scorned the suggestion that she is copying Twain--or anyone else.

“I only want to be who I am, and that’s Patty Loveless. And sometimes I don’t want to be her,” she added with a laugh.

Loveless, 43, told the story to illustrate how quickly things can change. She hasn’t released an album of original material since “Long Stretch of Lonesome” in 1997. Last year, while she took a break, Twain ruled with a sold-out tour and a multimillion-selling album, “Come on Over.”

“Strong Heart” (Sony-Nashville) is a reminder to fans that Loveless is one of the best singers in Nashville.

The album is also emblematic of country music in 2000; a time when the industry is wondering whether excellence and commercialism can go together, as they did in the past. Depending on your point of view, “Strong Heart” is either refreshingly diverse or perilously scattered as it struggles to hit that bull’s-eye.

“Strong Heart” contains a wide variety of styles, the best of which is the wonderfully bluesy “You Don’t Get No More,” written by Loveless and her husband-producer Emory Gordy Jr.

Then there is the frothy pop of “You’re So Cool,” the song that invited the Twain comparison. It’s got what it takes to become a hit single, but there is an element of desperation in its gimmicky production.

The song evokes memories of James Dean, Bob Dylan and other icons of cool to capture the feeling of romantic infatuation. There is some wheezy Dylan-style harmonica (played expertly by Steve Earle) thrown in as a musical joke.

“I’m always in search of songs that the young adult can relate to,” Loveless said. “I put myself in the place of this foolish woman that has this infatuation. . . . We all experience it. A lot of men do, too.”

Loveless could use a few laughs.

“I was trying to enjoy my life again,” she said of her yearlong break in 1999. “A lot of people didn’t realize I’d been singing since I was a kid.”

Born in Pikeville, Ky., Loveless is a distant cousin of country music legend Loretta Lynn. She arrived in Nashville as a teenager, where she was encouraged by such Grand Ole Opry stars as Porter Wagoner. She toured with the Wilburn Brothers at 16, then got married and moved to North Carolina.

“I lived some rough times,” Loveless said. “For a period of seven years there, I was into these really wild rock ‘n’ roll clubs. They were some rough places, the kind that open at 11 p.m. and close at 7 a.m.

“I learned a lot about life. I experienced a lot of lost souls in those clubs. I almost became one of them. I feel like I’m able to bring that to the table when it comes to recording.”

She returned to Nashville in 1985, scoring her first Top 10 hit in 1988 with an old George Jones song, “If My Heart Had Windows.”

Switching from MCA to Epic Records in 1993, she scored an immediate No. 1 hit with “Blame It on Your Heart.”

Then in 1996, just as the Academy of Country Music gave her the first of two straight best female vocalist awards, things started going wrong.

“That was the toughest year for me,” Loveless said. “My mother had been in the hospital, and my brother had been. My sister, we lost her.”

Her husband was hospitalized with a serious illness. After he recovered, Loveless contracted pneumonia.

“It was getting to the point, I wasn’t caring for myself,” she said. “I was trying too much to care for everybody else. I wasn’t caring for myself.”

She decided she needed a year off, no matter what happened to her career.

“There’s so much music out there right now that I just didn’t think that I’d be missed that much. But then I got a little afraid that I’d be forgotten.

“Once this album was done, and I believed in it so much, I decided it’s time for me to get my butt back out there.

“The rest has been good. I’m rejuvenated.”