Single Review: ‘Borrowed’ – LeAnn Rimes
12 years ago Liv Carter 8
Songwriters: LeAnn Rimes, Darrell Brown, David Baerwald
After a few changes, Curb Records has settled on ‘Borrowed’ as the new release of LeAnn Rimes‘ upcoming album, Spitfire, due out in the spring of 2013. The single is a deeply personal song but whether country radio will embrace its honesty remains to be seen.
Of the new album, Rimes has stated that she wanted to explore who she is and examine the choices she has made in life. Songwriting sessions doubled as therapy and resulted in honest, introspective lyrics. Calling out her own behavior as “pathetic,” the singer relives feelings of longing, desperation, separation and insecurity as she sings: Well, I keep myself alone in case you call tonight / It’s pathetic how I lie around and wait all the damn time / It’s a short high then a long low every time you have to go / And I don’t want give you back.
Rimes reached superstar status in her mid-teens and continued that success with outside songs, but having developed as a songwriter, her material is now of a totally different quality and truly feels like an exploration. On ‘Borrowed,’ there are no big notes, no showing off, just a desperately vulnerable vocal performance squeezing every bit of emotion out of the lyrics. The sparse production built around delicate steel further helps to turn this into an old-fashioned country ballad.
Country radio, and its core audience, has always been much more unforgiving of female artists who fail to meet the genre’s self-professed moral standards than it has of its male stars. ‘Borrowed’ is of such great quality that I sincerely hope radio and listeners alike can set aside their moral relativism and just admire and enjoy the song without any self-righteous judgement.
‘Borrowed’ will impact radio on December 17 and will be available digitally on December 18 via amazon.
Check out two new songs, ‘What Have I Done’ and ‘Borrowed’ (4:20).
Liv Carter
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
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