Country: Emmylou Harris' Heartaches & Highways

I first knew Emmylou Harris as the country singer that rock bands loved to ask to guest on their albums. Harris’ country voice would rise up amid the sounds you expected, bringing twang, sadness, and mournful distance to whatever she sang.

Midnight Oil tapped Emmylou Harris for their 1996 album, Breathe, and a ballad called “Home.” Peter Garrett’s earnest vocal meets up with Harris’ perfect tones on a song that follows a country pattern, draws on blues elements, and leaves an impression of Garrett and Harris being two dreamers singing together but looking two different directions.

Harris’ guest vocals are like that. She’s never there just to add harmony like a sampled backup singer. Harris enters on “Home” saying, “It’s a bastard song/It is a feeling that everything’s wrong/But we are alive, we that have wings.” She betrays no snarl in saying “bastard song,” delivering these sad-hopeful songs with the same angelic qualities, and yet, her voice can also snarl at the same time—a brokedown feeling that doesn’t need to be spelled out for you to feel it hit you like a most desperate emotion. Desperate is perhaps the best word to describe Harris’ voice—desperate with love and song.

Beyond Emmylou Harris’ guest appearances, you can catch up on what Harris has done on her own through a retrospective, Heartaches & Highways: The Very Best of Emmylou Harris. While much more centered in Harris’ natural territory of country music, the collection does give hints of how Harris cultivated her country voice into one of the best additions to such an incredibly wide range of popular styles.

Thanks to WIN EMMYLOU HARRIS’ CD!
I have 1 copy of Heartaches & Highways to give away. Winner will also some other country-leaning CDs from the prize closet. Enter Now! by naming another review at Music Spectrum that mention’s Emmylou Harris. Send the answer to pastorsquires@redeemermanty.com. Winners will be asked to send $1.50 in postage (Non-U.S. residents will be asked to pay the required postage through PayPal). Thanks!

Thanks to Emmylou Harris, Rhino, and Special Ops Media for their help.