Come On Come On - Mary Chapin Carpenter (1992)
at the turn of the 90s, country music was ditching some of the cliches that had ghettoized it and was pushing itself back into the mainstream. Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, and John Michael Montgomery were scoring major mainstream chart success, and a whole slew of other artists were riding their coattails comfortably in pop culture headspace.
Mary Chapin Carpenter was part of a more folksy, more cerebral country movement. Maybe becasue she came of age in the not-particularly-country DC metro, she never had the same affectations about barbed wire fences and pickup trucks the crops needing rain, so she built her songs around more personal topics.
There was already a scene full of country-adjacent folk with artists like Shawn Colvin and the Indigo Girls that people didn’t really consider to be country. But Carpenter blew the distinction out of the water with her early 90s records.
Most of these songs could sit comfortably alongside that contemporary folk sound, as well as fitting neatly in the country charts and pleasing the bluesy-rock fandoms as well.
The lyrics are always whip-smart. In addition to her own tunes, there’s a great cover of Dire Straits’ The Bug.
This is a great album that was great to hear again.
