Jo Dee Messina

“I live my life for other people,”country singer JoDee Messina said,”I’m single,and I’ve chose to be that way because I give every minute of every day to other people. I live my life for other people. Be it the fans or the media,I’m not complaining,this is how I’ve always dreamed my life would one day be. I love people and I’ve always wanted to live my life for the fans and my career,that’s always been very important to me.”

Messina is among an elite group of female country artists who are beginning to gradually shake things up on the country charts.

Her sound is as she describes it is,”a little bit edgy”,and the music she has recorded on her self titled debut,along with her first single release,”Heads Carolina, Tails California”,is different.

“I just hope I’m individual enough, so to speak,”she said. “I had to listen to close to a thousand tapes to find the ten songs that we were looking for to record. I can’t tell you exactly what we were looking for,I would say it’s material that everyone can relate to as well as I can relate to musically.
But it did take a long time,it took a year,to find the material for this album.” Messina’s experience is not unique to country artists these days. From the country elite,such as Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire,to the new artists fresh on national country music scene,good material to record is becoming increasingly difficult for the artists to find. Some artists are going through three thousand tapes to get ten or twelve songs they feel are right for them to record. I’ve even spoke with several artists who delayed their album releases up to a ten months,because they couldn’t find enough good material to record.

The implications of this could possibly unfold into a tough scenario for Music City.

As a rule,the majority of country artists do not record songs they’ve written themselves. There has been a slight change over the past few years,with several singer/songwriters making albums with they’re material exclusively on the record,however probably ninety per cent of the country artists on the charts today,are recording someone else’s songs.
“For every new singer who comes to Nashville,Messina said,”we get new songwriters. Hopefully the cutting(recording) cycle as far as recording the album,will change. A lot of artists want to record their album at the same time,so they’re all looking for songs at the same time. But,a lot of that is starting to shift. Artists are recording at different months of the year.”