Lucinda Williams

About

Also known as: Lucinda Gayl Williams, Williams, Lucinda

Few artists have made critics run out of superlatives the way Lucinda Williams has. The Lake Charles born singer songwriter spent years earning cult respect before Car Wheels on a Gravel Road landed in 1998 and fused rock, blues, country and Americana into something genuinely distinctive, going Gold and winning the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. By then she had already written "Passionate Kisses", which Mary Chapin Carpenter took to a Grammy win in 1994, and her self titled 1988 album had been called "gorgeous, flawless, brilliant" by one of America's most demanding critics. She followed Car Wheels with Essence in 2001, her first Top 40 Billboard entry, and kept the quality high through World Without Tears, West, Little Honey, Blessed, Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, The Ghosts of Highway 20 and Good Souls Better Angels. Time named her America's best songwriter in 2002, Rolling Stone put her at number 79 on its greatest songwriters list, and she has three Grammys from 17 nominations. Her recent track "The World's Gone Wrong" shows she is still very much in the game.