Pieces of the Sky by Emmylou Harris

Pieces of the Sky, released on Reprise on February 7, 1975, is technically Emmylou Harris's second album, but nobody much remembers the obscure folk record Gliding Bird from five years earlier. This is where her career really starts, and Gram Parsons, who had steered her toward country, is all over it in spirit: he had died the year before, and her own "Boulder to Birmingham" is written for him, a grief song that aches without ever raising its voice.

The rest of the picks show just how wide her ears were: Merle Haggard's "The Bottle Let Me Down", the Beatles' "For No One", Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors", Tammy Wynette's "Too Far Gone", and Shel Silverstein's "Queen of the Silver Dollar" with Linda Ronstadt singing harmony. Her duet with Herb Pedersen, "If I Could Only Win Your Love", became her first big country hit and earned a Grammy nomination, and the album reached No. 7 on the country albums chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.