After selling millions of albums and racking up a mantel full of awards, the country singer still seems a little embarrassed of the spot light, kind of like the shy valedictorian forced to pose for pictures after a commencement speech. When she talks about her nearly two-decade old career in country music, she calls it "The Patty Loveless Thing," as if she's referring to someone else who's onstage and tossing back a mane of red hair and posing for album cover in Armani.

It takes a while for her to relax in an interview, but eventually she lets her guard down and admits that the "real" Patty Loveless cleans her own house, washes her own clothes, buys her own groceries and drives a Toyota. "I have to wear both hats. I have to be onstage and be Patty Loveless, and there are times I'm able to break down and just be Patty, wife and homemaker," she says, "When I'm offstage, I want to be in blue jeans and real casual clothes, which throws people off. People come up to me and say, 'you almost look like Patty Loveless.' It's hard to pinpoint me or pick me out, and I prefer to be that way. I like to be treated as just another person."

Maybe it's this authenticity that makes Patty perhaps the best singer in country music today. While Nashville has spent most of the 90's signing acts that look and sound like commercial lightweights, Patty has never deviated from the mockingbird-pure sound she honed singing Loretta Lynn tunes when she was a child.

"Patty is the last of the breed that got signed because of her talent, and not because of how she looks on an album cover or how she struts around onstage," says country disk jockey Rhubarb Jones. "I actually go out and buy her records, mainly because I love her voice and her choice of material. She has a hurt in her voice, a genuine honest ache." But like any pair of sensible shoes, Patty has perhaps never been fully credited for her long and consistent contribution. While critically acclaimed, "Lonesome" hasn't produced the No. 1 singles she's used to. The album's duet between Patty and George Jones, "You Don't Seem to Miss Me," was perhaps the most powerful collaboration to come out of a Nashville studio in years, yet was shunned by some country stations as being "too country."
(Editors Note: Patty won CMA’s Vocal Event Of The Year with this song, Imagine THAT)
Imagine that.

Ed Benson, executive director of the CMA, thinks Patty will rise above the current choppy waters of Music City. "Patty Loveless is a timeless artist," he says. "She's going to have the enduring power of some of her forebears like Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn - people where the credibility and depth of talent will transcend all that's going on now."

When dissecting Patty Loveless' sound and success, many in the industry point to her partner/husband, Emory Gordy Jr. who has been a fixture on the music scene for years. Back in his Georgia days in the '60s, he played with the Classics IV and co-wrote the hit "Traces" with Buddy Buie. After heading to Music City, he played bass in several bands. In the early '90s, Emory, 51, began producing his wife's music, shepherding her into a more mature and compelling sound. Patty material began exploring complex, adult themes, starting with the hit "If My Heart Had Windows." "He's always involved, and 90 percent of the time he's right," Patty says of Emory. "He's just amazing, he blows me away. I think he's a genius, but he always takes the back seat." Emory has been instrumental in helping Patty with one of the most difficult tasks a vocalist faces: selecting material. For example, he found the Gary Scruggs/Tony Arata tune "Long Stretch of Lonesome," which Patty says is the perfect example of the type of lyric-driven song she craves:

"Where the memories that haunt me
Are gonna someday be my friend
When that long stretch of lonesome
Comes to an end."

Says the CMA's Benson: "Emory is a great partner for her in helping her pick those songs, and managing to get her to deliver what he thinks is the best Patty Loveless performance in that song. The songs they have been able to find for her records are just incredible. She’s one of those people who can take a song and make it more than it is through her vocal interpretation." Patty’s tunes are often dark and brooding, choking on the heartache of loss. She says much of the mood of her last album came for the "year from hell," which is what she calls 1996. That was the year an older sister died of emphysema, and Emory was hospitalized with pancreatitis. As a result, she was drawn to songs "that moved me in some kind of way I want my songs to move people, whether they're going though a bad situation or something that makes them feel good about life. We all go through the same things."

Patty says she is drawn to simplicity - "we tend to forget that simple is very good. A song doesn’t have to have a bunch of fancy lyrics, just say things that are subtle that get to the heart of things we have all felt."

Patty does that, and a lot more.