Music / Lee Ann Womack

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Lee Ann Womack (born August 19, 1966) is an American Country Music Singer-Songwriter and musician born in Jacksonville, Texas. She remains known for her neotraditional sound since The '90s, as well as her lush pop ballad "I Hope You Dance". She has had 22 Top 40 hits on the Billboard country charts.

The younger daughter of Aubrey Womack and his wife Ann Womack, she became interested in country music throughout her childhood and early adulthood, and often helped her father choose records to play on the KEBE-AM radio station. In 1985, Lee Ann worked as an artists and repertoire intern at MCA Records after relocating to Nashville as a Belmont University student, and then got her break when fellow singer Ricky Skaggs cut one of her songs, "I Don't Remember Forgetting" (included on his 1997 album Life Is a Journey). She signed to MCA's Decca Records label in early 1996 and had modest success with her first two albums, the self-titled Lee Ann Womack and Some Things I Know. These discs, both produced by Mark Wright, displayed a traditional country influence with ballads such as "The Fool" and "A Little Past Little Rock".

Decca's January 1999 closure in the aftermath of the Universal/PolyGram merger led to Womack jumping ship to the MCA Records Nashville label, where she would stay until 2012. By the Turn of the Millennium, she had her biggest hit with "I Hope You Dance" (which appeared on the album of the same name), a beloved pop Parental Love Song from mother to child, with a guest vocal from country group Sons of the Desert. The song was her only #1 hit on the Billboard country charts, and a Top 20 pop hit. The corresponding album included another minor hit in a cover of Rodney Crowell's "Ashes by Now", but after that, her momentum tapered off some: neither single from Something Worth Leaving Behind made it to the Top 10 country hits, nor did "The Wrong Girl" from her 2004 Greatest Hits Album. 2005's There's More Where That Came From saw a minor return to commercial success, as well as a return to her older twangier sound, driven by the ballad "I May Hate Myself in the Morning". After a brief stint at Mercury Records, Womack returned to MCA to record her final album for the label, 2008's Call Me Crazy. She has since released The Way I'm Livin' on Sugar Hill Records in 2014 and The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone on ATO Records in 2017, and still tours quite frequently.

Since November 1999, Womack has been married to record producer Frank Liddell, best known for being Miranda Lambert's producer; their daughter Anna Lise Liddell is a musician and engineer in her own right. She was previously married to singer-songwriter Jason Sellers^note who also briefly toured as Ricky Skaggs' bassist from 1991 to 1996, and their daughter Aubrie Sellers is also a country music singer.

Her personal website can be found here.

Discography:

I Hope You Trope, I Hope You Trope...:

• Alliterative Title: "Make Memories with Me", "Montgomery to Memphis", "Liars Lie" and "Bottom of the Barrel".
• Author Avatar: "Am I the Only Thing That You’ve Done Wrong" is about Womack's experiences watching Jason Sellers with Ricky Skaggs on television whenever she was alone.
• Break-Up Song: Among others, "Montgomery to Memphis" and "A Little Past Little Rock" feature the protagonist escaping from her troubled relationships with her ex.
• The Cameo: Her daughters Aubrie Sellers and Anna Lise Liddell both make cameos in the video for "I Hope You Dance".
• Captain Obvious: In "Liars Lie", after catching her lover trying to lie, the narrator sings:
  Losers lose, winners win
  Cheaters cheat, sinners sin
  Dreamers dream, cryers cry
  Fools believe, and Liars Lie
• Christmas Songs: Her 2002 album, The Season for Romance, consists of original compositions (including the title track and "Forever Christmas Eve") as well as Christmas standards like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "Silent Night".
• Cover Version: Lee Ann has done quite a few covers of country songs over the years.
• Dog-Kicking Excuse: "I'll Think of a Reason Later" is about a woman wishing she had a more justified reason to hate her romantic rival and excuse her "childish" spite antics like drawing a mustache and horns on a photo of her.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Last Call" is about a woman getting a call from a cheating ex late at night when he's drunk, saying he still loves her and needs a ride home. The bar is closing down (it's "last call") and he only ever calls her when he's drunk ("I'm always your last call").
• Downer Ending: The Something Worth Leaving Behind album ends with "Closing This Memory Down", a song about the narrator getting tired of both her broken heart and going out of business.
• Driving Song: "A Little Past Little Rock", where the woman is driving down an Arkansas highway to escape her troubled relationship.
• Dual-Meaning Chorus: A Played With example occurs in "Last Call". The narrator gets a call from an ex late at night saying he still loves her, which he only ever does when he's drunk and needs a ride home (it's last call in the bar, and she's always his last call). The bridge switches it, saying "Call me crazy, I think maybe, we've had our last call," implying she's going to stop bailing him out in the future.
• Greatest Hits Album: Lee Ann's works have been repackaged many times over the years. The first album was released in 2004 and featured two new tracks ("The Wrong Girl" and "Time for Me to Go"), while the second (Icon) was released seven years later.
• Green-Eyed Monster: "I'll Think of a Reason Later" has the narrator voicing jealousy toward her ex's new lover.
• Irony: "A Little Past Little Rock" (which is a breakup song) and "I May Hate Myself in the Morning" (about having a one-night stand with an ex) both feature her ex-husband, Jason Sellers, on backing vocals.
• Let's Duet: She sang "Make Memories With Me" with Mark Chesnutt and "Mendocino County Line" with Willie Nelson.
• Location Song:
  • The protagonist of "Montgomery to Memphis" lives in Memphis after breaking up with her ex-boyfriend in Montgomery, Alabama.
  • In "A Little Past Little Rock", the protagonist leaves a relationship she knows is bad for her but she wants to stay in. She's driving east from Dallas, and is "a little past Little Rock, but a long way from over you."
  • As the name suggests, "Hollywood" is set in the titular district of Los Angeles, California.
• Lyric Swap: "Why They Call It Falling" questions the metaphor of "falling in love", by expressing the highs and joys of love with the question "Why they call it falling, I don't know." Then come the line "Sooner or later, you have to come down", she expresses the downfall when her lover finds someone new, and then states "Why they call it falling, now I know."
• Mustache Vandalism: In "I'll Think of a Reason Later", she vandalizes a picture of the woman that her ex is now with by drawing horns and blacking out a tooth with a marker.
• New Sound Album: I Hope You Dance and Something Worth Leaving Behind were far more slick and poppy than her earlier and later albums.
• Ocean Awe: "I Hope You Dance" has the line "I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean".
• One-Steve Limit: Lee Ann Womack is not related to Drew Womack, lead singer of "I Hope You Dance" featured artists Sons of the Desert.
• One-Word Title: "Buckaroo" from Lee Ann Womack, "Happiness", "Painless" and "Stubborn" from There's More Where That Came From, "Nightwind" from The Way I'm Livin', and "Hollywood", "Sunday" and "Wicked" from The Lonely, The Lonesome & The Gone all have one word in their title.
• Parental Love Song: "I Hope You Dance" (parent to child).
• Retraux: The There's More Where That Came From album art was intended to evoke this, going with the album's neotraditional sound.
• Self-Backing Vocalist: On quite a few albums, Lee Ann has also performed as a backing vocalist.
• Self-Titled Album: Her 1997 debut album is named after herself.
• "Sesame Street" Cred:
  • Lee Ann performed the Title Theme Tune for Nelvana's adaptation of The Berenstain Bears (2002)
  • She later appeared as herself towards the end of the 2007 Sesame Street DVD release Kids' Favorite Country Songs.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: "I'll Think of a Reason Later" describes this toward a woman that the singer hasn't even met, but is apparently engaged to a man she likes. She concludes, "She may be an angel who spends all winter/Bringing the homeless blankets and dinner," but "I really hate her/I'll think of a reason later."
• Special Guest:
  • Lee Ann contributed harmony vocals for "I Don't Remember Forgetting" (which she co-wrote) on the Ricky Skaggs album Life Is a Journey.
  • She was also a featured artist in Rodney Crowell's "Flatland Hillbilies", which was released in 2019.
  • Lee Ann appeared as a backing vocalist on her daughter Aubrie Sellers's 2016 album New City Blues, along with Jason Sellers.
  • Lee Ann and Norah Jones were guest singers on Dolly Parton's rendition of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" in Those Were the Days, which was released in 2005.
• Spoken Word in Music: "I'll Think of a Reason Later" ends with a brief spoken word monologue from the singer, who admits her jealousy towards her ex's lover.
• There Is a God!: Her single of that name uses this as a recognition of the work of God in such things as the beauty of nature, or the inexplicable cure of diseases.
• Three Chords and the Truth: There's More Where That Came From reflected a back-to-basics approach after Lee Ann experimented with pop elements for I Hope You Dance and Something Worth Leaving Behind.
• Title-Only Chorus: "I Hope You Dance", not counting the counterpoint sung by Sons of the Desert (which was scrubbed from the pop edit).
• Title Track: Some Things I Know, I Hope You Dance, Something Worth Leaving Behind, The Season for Romance, There's More Where That Came From, The Way I'm Livin' and The Lonely, The Lonesome & The Gone all have songs sharing the exact titles on which they're found.
• Working with the Ex: Even though she divorced Jason Sellers in 1996, she has recorded several of his songs and even had him sing backing vocals a few times.