Greatest Hits (CD - 2004)

Personnel: Lee Ann Womack, Willie Nelson (vocals); B. James Lowry, Randy Scruggs (acoustic guitar); Brent Mason, Pat Buchanan (electric guitar); Aubrey Haynie, Paul Franklin (steel guitar); Steve Nathan (keyboards); Glen Worf (bass); Lonnie Wilson, Chad Cromwell (drums).

Producers include: Mark Wright, Lee Ann Womack, Matt Serletic, Frank Liddell, Byron Gallimore.

Recorded at Ocean Way, Essential Sound Studios, Nashville, Tennessee.

To earn a greatest-hits compilation after only four albums (not counting a Christmas record that's unrepresented here), you have to make one hell of a splash on the music scene. That's exactly what Lee Ann Womack did between 1997 and this disc's '04 release. Hearing this sampler of Womack's albums, the sweet, angelic voice and solid songcraft jump out in equal measure. Perhaps of more historic importance, though, is the context. If Womack had appeared 10 or 15 years earlier, she would have seemed like a foreshadowing of country's pop-friendly future. After years of being inundated by Faith Hill and Shania Twain's disciples, however, Womack's amiable, relatively modest approach seems downright rootsy, with more ache and twang per bar than any Nashville assembly-line kewpie doll has in her entire catalog. From the lovelorn "The Fool" to the lighthearted romp "I'll Think of a Reason Later," GREATEST HITS shows Womack in her best light. minimize