In 1979, when Rosanne Cash cut Right or Wrong, her first album for Columbia Records, she sounded like a revelation: a vocalist with a strong and versatile instrument, a rocker's nervy instincts, and a respect for country music traditions that didn't leave room for stodginess or the hollow sound of the emergent Nash Vegas era (not to mention an impressive lineage). What's most remarkable is that Cash became so much more with the passage of time; she grew into one of the most interesting acts on the country charts in the '80s and '90s, bringing pop, rock, and country together in a way that actually brought out the strengths in each style rather than diluting them, and then matured into a first-rate songwriter whose literate and deeply personal work dealt with the hardest realities of life and love with intelligence, honesty, and heart. There have been a handful of collections that have skimmed the cream from Cash's seven albums for Columbia, recorded between 1979 and 1993, but The Essential Rosanne Cash, compiled by Cash and Gregg Geller, puts nearly all of them to shame.
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