Red Dirt Girl by Emmylou Harris

Red Dirt Girl, Emmylou Harris' 19th studio album, came out on Nonesuch on September 12, 2000, and it's the sound of the great interpreter finally stepping out from behind other people's songs. She wrote or co-wrote 11 of the 12 tracks, a startling turn for a singer whose name had long been made on covers: before this, only Gliding Bird in 1969 and The Ballad of Sally Rose in 1985 had carried more than two of her own compositions.

Malcolm Burn produced, and he wraps her in a murky, atmospheric haze, country folk drifting through a swamp at dusk, with that luminous voice floating above it all. "Bang the Drum Slowly", written with Guy Clark, is an elegy for her father, and it aches. The record climbed to number 3 on Billboard's country albums chart and won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 2001. Stumble into Grace kept the pen in her hand.

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