Songs We Love: Lee Ann Womack, 'All The Trouble'
Many a singer has sung of mustering the strength to overcome hardship; it's the stuff of blustery power ballads, irrepressible empowerment anthems and aggressively aggrieved rock sing-alongs. But it's a simpler thing to narrate that act through lyrics than it is to embody that experience through a vivid performance.
In "All The Trouble," from the upcoming album by Lee Ann Womack, one of country music's finest voices, she makes her entrance a cappella, sounding deflated beneath the crushing weight of her burdens. When the band eases into its loose-limbed groove, she remains fatalistic. Her sighed phrasing and subtly sagging notes signal resignation: "It's hard being little; it's hard being small / Make it up that mountain, you're standing big and tall / Well, the trouble with a mountain, there's a million ways to fall."
As she reaches the refrain a second time, Womack leaps an entire octave, mustering the full, keenly melancholic force of her head voice. With
