Chely Wright

August 17, 1999
Web posted at: 11:59 a.m. EDT (1559 GMT)

By Donna Freydkin
Reporting for CNN Interactive

In this story: AUDIO: Sample Wright's work Hard luck woman Just a country girl RELATED STORIES, SITES

(CNN) -- You could never accuse Chely Wright of being stymied by a lack of ambition. At age 3, she announced to her amused family that she'd become a country singer. She kept her word, singing professionally by age 11 and forming her first band, County Line, in her teens.

Before she was out of high school, she played at the Ozark Jubilee, a long-running country show, in Branson, Missouri. At 18, she joined the "Country Music U.S.A." show at the Opryland theme park in Nashville.

So four albums later, you might think she'd consider success to be an old friend. But not quite.

"The most amazing thing to me is doing live shows and feeling the response," she says. "Every song we do now, the audience gets excited. People sing along and know the words. It's crazy and nice and overwhelming."

Wright -- whose first name is pronounced "Shelley" -- released her fourth and breakthrough album, "Single White Female," in May of this year. It's a collection of personal songs tinged with girl power, country-style. That just earned her a Country Music Association Horizon Award nomination.

Sounding like Carly Simon with a touch of Bonnie Raitt, Wright sings about ordinary women dealing with life's little problems. But she says her album is less a declaration of female independence than just a series of tunes about having faith and following your heart.

And given her own choppy career, that's something Wright knows about firsthand. "Single White Female," she says, was as much a labor of love as it was her vindication, proving that sometimes hard work and talent do pay off.

"My definition of luck," she says, "is where opportunity and preparation collide. And fortunately people saw that I wasn't going to give up."

MULTIMEDIA

"Single White Female" [150k MPEG-3] or [205k WAV] "Picket Fences" [140k MPEG-3] or [195k WAV] "Some Kind of Somethin'" [165k MPEG-3] or [225k WAV] (Courtesy MCA Records Nashville)

Star baby

That early proclamation to her family about her intentions of singing country was handed down at Christmas 1973, in her rural Kansas home. Years later, she'd be parlaying local gigs into her work at Opryland, where she portrayed Loretta Lynn, Connie Smith and other singers. She even posed for the bronze statue of comedian Minnie Pearl in Music City's legendary Ryman Auditorium.

Barely in her 20s, she moved to Nashville and got her record deal.

"There's never a formula for making it," she says, "and I had it in my head that there was. I was always trying to figure out the secret to making it. I moved here 10 years ago and it's just been a series of opportunities missed and opportunities hit.

"I made sure everyone in town knew who I was and knew what I did. For some reason, I had a desire to make sure that people knew who I was, to make sure I knew who was running what company and I would go up and introduce myself."

Wright began recording in 1994. She signed with Mercury/Polygram and worked with veteran songwriter Harlan Howard, whose "He's a Good Ole Boy" gave her a hit on her debut album, "Woman in the Moon." She promptly picked up a 1995 top new vocalist award from the Academy of Country Music.

Hard luck woman

But that's when her luck turned. None of her singles had cracked the Top 20, and she fell by the wayside.

"When I was first signed," says Wright, "it was the Garth Brooks explosion. People were saying, 'Let's sign this, does it work? No. Let's get rid of it.'"

And so they did. Despite a reputation for being a tough cookie with a great voice, Wright fell through the cracks. Her second album, "Right in the Middle of It," was lost in a corporate shuffle and Wright asked to be released from her contract.

She left her label and went searching for something better. And she says that while she got discouraged, she never entertained the thought of quitting. Although she might sound something like a motivational Tony Robbins tape, Wright insists that without her chutzpah and sheer determination, she wouldn't be anywhere near MCA Nashville today.

"I have this great default setting called repression," she says. "I have this ability to not recognize when something isn't going my way. And I just made myself think, at the time, that radio airplay just wasn't that important. Because I have to believe in my mind that what is going on in my life is exactly what I want."

She re-emerged in 1997 on MCA, working with her dream producer Tony Brown on her CD "Let Me In." Wright says she hooked up with MCA because of the label's stellar roster, which includes Vince Gill and George Strait.

"Just having a record deal doesn't get you anything," she says. "It doesn't even mean that you'll be released. It took me a couple of albums to realize what it is that I wanted -- and I wanted to be on the best label, with the best producers and the best managers."

Her career got a jump-start with the song "Shut Up and Drive," her first Top 10 hit, and continued cruising with the ballad "I Already Do," which Wright co-wrote with Gary Burr. She ended up opening for Gill during his 1998 tour, and was the only female artist chosen for the 1999 Royal Crown Tour.

But it's this year's "Single White Female" that's established Wright not just as a country star in her own right, but as a singer with crossover potential, à la the Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill and Kelly Willis.

Wright wrote several of the songs on the album, including "Picket Fences," which considers her parents' divorce and her unwillingness to accept unpleasant situations.

"It's about the fact that I don't have a husband and kids right now," she says, "which is something that of course I truly, deeply want. But in the song, I say, 'What's so great about picket fences? Painting them is such a mess. I'll never get any sleep.' That's my way of saying that what I've got right now is exactly what I want."

She co-wrote "Some Kind of Somethin'," a song about a relationship in the making. And she enlisted the help of Trisha Yearwood on "Single White Female," Patty Loveless on "Why Do I Still Want You?" and Alison Krauss on "Picket Fences."

Picket fences

Wright says she considers herself part of the "new country" movement, which appeals just as much to old-school country fans as to those partial to pop radio. But while harboring dreams of crossing over, Wright remains devoted to her core group of listeners. She's a country girl at heart.

"A lot of fans come up and tell me they never listened to country until they got their hands on my album," she says. "That's a good thing. Of course, I want to be a country music artist, but if fans in other genres of music hear my music and like it and buy it, cool.

"I'm not saying I want a pop release, but if I record a song that has crossover potential, I'm not going to not record it that way. But my main objective is country music fans."

Professionally, Wright dreams of being a member of the Grand Ol' Opry. The ultimate in terms of a personal life, she says, would be to marry and have a family. She's the first to admit that she'd like two kids and that picket fence, but just not today. At the moment, thanks to incessant touring, she can't even keep her plants alive. Not that she's whining.

"Good things are happening to me right now," Chely Wright says. "I'm writing songs, I'm making records, I'm touring. If anybody complains that they don't have more than that, they should be slapped in the face."