Mary Chapin Carpenter: The Calling

Label: Zoe/ Rounder
Sound/Style: lyric-driven folk and even-keeled adult rock

Mary Chapin Carpenter is highly regarded for her songwriting skill as well as the string of memorable country hits she scored in the 1990s. Today she’s less a presence in contemporary country than an honorably discharged member of the commercial music-making brigade. Her intelligently written and sometimes pointedly liberal songs make her something of a Nashville exile, not unlike The Dixie Chicks (though their discharge, unlike Carpenter’s, was fraught with controversy). However, Carpenter has leapt into the fray surrounding the Chicks’ fall from the country nest. On her new album, The Calling, she rails against conservative America in "On With The Song," a number she dedicates to The Dixie Chicks. Her politically charged lyrics position non-conservatives as somehow smarter than the rest, risking hypocrisy by criticizing the free expression of people with whom the singer disagrees: "This isn’t for the ones who blindly follow/ Jingoistic bumper stickers telling you/ To love it or leave it, and you’d better love Jesus/ And get out of the way of the red, white and blue."