Jessica Simpson goes country

Teenybopper Jessica Simpson tries her hand at country & western.

Jessica Simpson
Do You Know
Epic/Columbia Nashville

Review by Randy Lewis

The moment pop princess/reality TV star Jessica Simpson announced her intention to record a country album, Nashville purists were up in arms.

Listening to the result, it's hard to see what the fuss was about.

The pleasant surprise here is that she has co-written several songs that do indeed delve beneath the cover-girl surface of her life.

Sipping on History, credited to Simpson, Hillary Lindsey and Luke Laird, mourns a lifelong might-have-been romance, while Still Beautiful, by Simpson and co-producers John Shanks and Brett James, acknowledges the downs in life as necessary to personal growth.

Simpson doesn't exhibit much of a gift for vocal sculpting, and Shanks and James don't help much by often burying her voice in over-the-top production.

Her struggle is most striking on the title track, written by Dolly Parton, who shows up to harmonise with Simpson.

It's sweet enough when Simpson delivers the first verse, but as soon as Parton joins in, the gap between novice and master couldn't be clearer.

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