Step Inside This House - Lovett, Lyle (CD 1998)

A trend as of late for many artists is to put together a collection of songs written by the artists who have inspired them over the years. Everybody from Streisand to Metallica has attempted it with various degrees of success. Shawn Colvin's 1993 record COVER GIRL was a wondrous female take on her favorite male singers, while Pat Boone's ridiculous covers of heavy metal songs was one of the most ill-conceived projects that ever made it into the realm of the listening audience. Lyle Lovett, himself a highly respected artist who continues to break the "country music" mold with his swingin'...

Step Inside This House is an amazing two-disc compilation in which Lyle Lovett pays tribute to influential Texas songwriters. Most people expect every Lovett album to feature his quirky side - and most do. Seemingly true to form, he starts off this album with two quirky songs - Bears and Lungs. But he seems to have selected these songs as a sort of segue from the Lyle everyone knows to the Lyle that he now wants to be. And that Lyle is a true artist. The remaining tracks the first disc and all the tracks on the second disc showcase his flair for storytelling. Most feature a haunting gospel...

We mythologize our favorite performers, setting them in a framework of our own expectations and beliefs that makes them more comprehensible to us. Lyle Lovett is particularly vulnerable to such characterization, because he is extraordinarily memorable visually -- some say he's ugly, others that that his visage is nothing more than purely distinctive -- and because so much of his private life was illuminated during a brief marriage to fellow myth Julia Roberts. In my own personal myths for Lovett, which I suspect reflect those of other fans and are surely influenced by them, I see a trajectory.