Older, wiser and all of 22

When a record company trumpets a musician’s “welcome return to his/her (fill in genre here) roots,” more often than not the unspoken message is, “OK, the stab at crossover fizzled -- back to square one.” So the press release with country-pop diva LeAnn Rimes’ new album “This Woman,” heralding it as her “return to her country roots,” seemed to suggest a concession speech for her bid in recent years to join young thrushes such as Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears at the top of the pop heap.

That’s at least partially true, even if Rimes and her record company don’t care to acknowledge it. But it’s also true that the album does present a stronger point of view and a more assured attempt at artistic expression than anything else she’s put out since bursting onto country radio nearly a decade ago, at age 13, with her ghost-of-Patsy Cline-conjuring hit “Blue.”

She became regular fodder for the tabloids in the ensuing years -- with lawsuits against her record label for taking advantage of her youthful ignorance and her father for misappropriating her money, as well as her marriage at 19. All of that is addressed, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, on “This Woman.” If that title seems to suggest she’s left her tumultuous childhood behind, Rimes, 22, wouldn’t disagree.

“I’m a strong woman with great goals in life -- great personal goals and great professional goals I want to accomplish,” she says by phone from New York City recently as she heads to the airport to catch a westbound plane.

Her first stop on a brief string of winter club dates before she embarks on a larger-scale tour this summer was Las Vegas, on her way to shows tonight and Friday at the Roxy in West Hollywood.

“Obviously I’m making the decisions now,” she says, in contrast to the early part of her career when her father was also her manager, which led to testy accusations back and forth when she filed suit against him and his partner, claiming they had siphoned off $7 million from her and her entertainment company over a five-year period. But she says that rift has been repaired “with just good communication” and family relations are sunny “now that my parents are just my parents again.” The dispute with her label has been smoothed over as well.

“I don’t want anyone to fall back on,” she says. “It’s time for me to make my own decisions. I enjoy being creative and I’m smart about it now. I’ve had 10 years of success and experience, and I’m always learning. I think that’s a good thing.”

The first single from “This Woman,” “Nothin’ ‘Bout Love Makes Sense,” is a shuffle that’s allowed country radio programmers to put her back on their playlists, something that didn’t happen much with her previous studio album, “Twisted Angel.” And the one before that, “I Need You,” she claimed at the time, was released without her participation or approval, and she publicly disavowed it through her website.

She does, however, take responsibility for the pop-sounding records she made following the leads of Shania Twain and Faith Hill on the road to crossover success. That was most obvious with her ballad “How Do I Live?” as well as her acting debut in the film “Coyote Ugly.”

“Everything I’ve done has made me who I am today, and I like who I am,” she says. “The decisions I’ve made, people can criticize all they want, but they don’t know who I am completely and they don’t understand that every experience led to this record. I don’t think I would have made this album if all that hadn’t happened.”

She hasn’t yet entered the realm of Alicia Keys or Norah Jones, but there are signs of more thought and self-reflection in “This Woman,” in the songs she’s had a hand in writing as well as those by other songwriters.

In “You Take Me Home,” one of three she co-wrote, she sings of the whirlwind life she lived in Los Angeles until she and her husband, Dean Sheremet, moved to Nashville two years ago:

I was blinded by the city lights

L.A. living up the crazy life

Looking back on how far I’d come

Not quite sure what I was running from

It’s representative of how she has grown since she was a teenager, when her singing voice and musical themes both far exceeded her years.

“I was more of an actress when I was 12, and I’m not now. This is a very personal record for me,” she says. “I’ve learned a lot about my craft.

“The last decade I’ve started to understand how my voice works and how to take care of it. As I’ve gotten older, it really has matured. And my emotional level in interpreting songs has matured because I’ve lived a lot more and have a lot more experience to draw upon. Now I’m writing from my own life experience and my own emotions.”

A major part of that was the deaths last year of two people close to her: her stepfather’s mother, Correne Miller, and musician John Blaylock -- losses that would appear to be behind her selection of John Kennedy and Tammi Kidd’s song “Probably Wouldn’t Be This Way,” with its chorus:

I never pictured every minute without

you in it

You left so fast

God gave me a moment’s grace

‘cause if I’d never seen your face

I probably wouldn’t be this way

“John was a very good friend and he passed away very quickly. Both of those losses made me appreciate life and every breath. Something like that makes you realize how fragile it is,” she says. “Both of them were still here when I recorded that, but it took on a deeper meaning after they passed away.”

And although there are several sobering moments in the new album, Rimes shows that growing up hasn’t robbed her of her youthful sense of adventure, most evident in “I Got It Bad,” a party-hearty Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque rocker she wrote with Sheremet and Trey Bruce.

“It has a real southern rock feel. It was a fun song for me, one where I can just let my hair down,” she says. “That’s just who I am -- there are so many sides to my personality, and the songs I chose reflect that. I think I made a really good album, one that’s country based, but I feel like for the first time I found my own style. It’s a mixture of a lot of things -- country, rock and blues -- very organic.”

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Randy Lewis can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

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LeAnn Rimes

Where: The Roxy

9009 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. today and Friday

Price: $25 in advance, $30 day of show

Info: (310) 278-9457; www.theroxyonsunset.com