LeAnn Rimes "Life Goes On" (2002)

Album: Twisted Angel
Label: Curb Records


Some of the best C&W of the aughts was actually R&B, and vice versa. Faith Hill's “One” was one sterling example; this was another, and it ticked people off. People, see, had in their minds that LeAnn Rimes was supposed to be some kind of pure country singer, thanks to songs she had once been given that had helped her go quadruple platinum as a 14-year-old.

By her next two regular albums, though, she was already covering Debby Boone and Prince, and pretty much her whole career from that point on was a back-and-forth tug-of-war between her alleged old-school country roots and the poppier proclivities she clearly saw as asserting independence. Which they were.

When good-taste know-it-alls with sticks up their keisters want to limit you, misbehavior in the opposite direction counts as an act of courage. With 2000's much-remixed “Can't Fight The Feeling” from the Coytote Ugly soundtrack (think Urban Cowboy two decades on), Rimes crossed over big-time on both charts (No.11 pop, No.61 country) and dancefloors.

And in 2002's somewhat less lucrative “Life Goes On” (No. 110 pop, No. 60 country)-off an album called Twisted Angel which was produced by old metal-disco hand Desmond Child and on which Rimes wore several varieties of wanton lingerie in the CD booklet.

"She stomped under mirrorballs like Laura Branigan or Taylor Dayne while asserting independence from a cad who believes he's the “Daddy Mac.” Thing is, nobody else in pop or R&B was mirrorball-stomping that hard anymore in 2002. If it takes a country diva to do it, so be it.