After all, he was even including Burt Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” in his sets on the 1977 Live Stiffs tour. For all its nihilistic bile, My Aim Is True is just as much a tribute to artists like the Band and Randy Newman as the Clash. The truth is, Costello never seemed pleased to be lumped in with the punks. Costello was growing up, and-as he had done on previous albums, like Almost Blue (1981) and Imperial Bedroom(1982)-exploring new genres, leaving the punk and new wave labels behind. While Spike may have raised a few eyebrows with hardcore fans, it’s important to note that it did contain his biggest US pop hit: the bouncy “ Veronica”, which was co-penned by McCartney and lamented the toll that Alzheimer’s was taking on his grandmother. They also embraced various previously unexplored sounds (brass-infused New Orleans jazz, Bacharach-influenced chamber pop, Spectorian Wall of Sound, etc.) and were dotted with songs co-written by his new best friend, Paul McCartney. Both albums signified (well, for the most part) a break from his celebrated backing band, the Attractions. Mighty Like a Rose was, to put it in overly simple terms, something of a sequel to his previous album, 1989’s Spike. A couple of months prior, he was pictured on the cover of Musician magazine with Jerry Garcia, the headline stating: “The King of the Hippies and the Prince of Punks”. Yet, there he was on the front of Mighty Like a Rose (released in May 1991), looking positively hirsute and strangely at peace. In 1965, Bob Dylan angered the purists when he plugged in an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival Miles Davis controversially embraced a rock-leaning type of jazz fusion in the late 1960s and in the early 1990s, Elvis Costello grew a beard and released Mighty Like a Rose.įor Costello-who careened onto the punk/new wave scene in 1977 with coke bottle glasses, a slim-fitting suit, and attitude to spare as he sneered into the camera on the cover of debut LP My Aim Is True-long hair and a beard were tantamount to treason. This blend of contemporary attitudes and classic sounds is insinuating and addictive, particularly because at nine songs, it's too brief - once it's through, the album practically begs you to start all over again.Music is rife with artists whose stylistic changes invoke ire from fans. Monroe is enamored with tradition, pushing fiddles to the foreground and sometimes succumbing to the smoky sway of a slow dance at a dancehall, but she's not a retro-singer, she's a modern girl hauling old ways into the present. Produced by Vince Gill, Like a Rose expertly balances sweet, slightly sad ballads with devilishly funny, modern honky tonk, songs where Monroe asks for "Weed Instead of Roses" and trades barbs with Blake Shelton on the diss-duet "You Ain't Dolly." Here, Monroe strikes a tricky balance between satire and sincerity, never quite tipping the scales in favor of novelty, which is a testament to her savviness as a songwriter and a singer. Lambert's star helped sell the trio, but Monroe was a pivotal part of their debut Hell on Heels which, in turn, led to her securing a contract with Warner Nashville, who released Like a Rose early in 2013.
Ashley Monroe spent several years struggling to get heard in Nashville, establishing some behind-the-scenes bona fides by writing songs and singing backing vocals at Jack White's Third Man studios before things started to break her way in a big fashion in 2011, when she teamed with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley as the Pistol Annies.
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