I'm Just a Girl (CD - 2003)

Personnel: Deana Carter (vocals, acoustic guitar, synthesizer, chimes); Dwight Yoakam (vocals); Dan Dugmore (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, steel guitar, lap steel guitar, dobro); Chuck Jones , Matraca Berg, John D. Willis (acoustic guitar); Dann Huff, Billy Mann, Tom Bukovac (electric guitar); Jonathan Yudkin (banjo, mandolin, fiddle, cello); Randy Leago (accordion, clarinet, horns, piano, Hammond b-3 organ, keyboards); John Hobbs, Steve Nathan (organ, keyboards); Glenn Worf (bass guitar); Chris McHugh, Greg Morrow, Ricky Fataar, Steve Brewster (drums); Eric Darken (percussion); Crystal Taliefero, Lisa Cochran, Andrew Gold, Bekka Bramlett (background vocals).

On her third album, and her first for Arista, pop-country star Deana Carter ventures ever further from traditional country convention (not that she was ever exactly Kitty Wells to begin with). "Cover of a Magazine" is a pure pop confection where Carter appears to have her cake and eat it too by lustily dreaming of being a sexy cover model but maintaining a small measure of ironic distance from the subject as an escape clause. In perhaps the biggest non-country step by any Nashville artist this side of Shania Twain, Carter seemingly jumps on board the contemporaneous garage rock revival with the rambunctious "Girls' Night Out." Carter's clearly nobody's fool--when the climactic moment in the title song arrives, and she sings "I'm a Chevy girl" you can practically see the potential automotive endorsements falling like rain from a cloudy sky. "Liar" is perky, chugging, '80s-sounding pop-rock that wouldn't have sounded out of place on an early Pat Benatar record. Dwight Yoakam turns up for a stab at old-school country duet singing on "Waiting," but with her inclination toward changing things up stylistically, Carter seems unlikely to wait for anyone or anything to catch up with her. minimize