Sunny Sweeney is surely one of the finest and most interesting songwriters in modern country right now

not that i'm anything more than a country dilettante, but this woman is blowing me away. "from a table away" was one of my favourite singles of 2010, a nuanced take on being the other woman that was devastating in its understatement and resignation. i also felt like it captured something really true about being the kind of person who seems to default to singlehood vs. the kind of person who defaults to being in a couple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLOmpgLmtP0

she's just released a self-titled EP, which has confirmed to me that "from a table away" wasn't a one-off, and is why i've started this thread. "amy", for example, is like a response to "jolene", but a deeply ambivalent one - ostensibly an apology, but with some real barbs in there, and one that ends up as an odd kind of confessional plea. on "staying's worse than leaving", sweeney again excels in a role that transgresses small town social mores - i find it interesting that she seems drawn to these, and can tell those stories with such nuance.

(opening line of "amy": "amy, please let me explain: I'm only half of what's causing all your pain.")

i love the lyrical twist of "helluva heart", too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMWeKEmuqU0

a quick glance of her bio reveals that she's something of a late bloomer, having tried to forge a career in a NYC comedy troupe (!) initially before moving back to texas to start singing. this seems important, that she spent time living and gaining experience before she even thought of songwriting as a career.

oh yeah she also has a debut album that i haven't heard yet, released in 2007.

Rolling Country folks will know more than I do but her debut album (Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame) seems a lot cornier (in a way that I like) than her recent stuff. When I heard it I thought she sounded uncannily like Miley Cyrus; imagined the album was from some parallel universe in which Miley went country with a small cabal of Nashville songwriters after "The Climb."

I streamed "Next Big Nothing" from that album a while back:

http://cureforbedbugs.tumblr.com/post/1359913803/sunny-sweeney-the-next-big-nothing-super

Lex - and everyone - just want to say that if you like the Sunny Sweeney EP there's scads more where that came from (e.g., Lee Ann Womack's "There's More Where That Came From") going back decades upon decades, so you've got plenty of treats in store.

Pretty delighted that my favorite two country songs of 2010 (Little Big Town's "Little White Church" and Sunny Sweeney's "From A Table Away") finished at 2 and 3 in the Nashville Scene's Country Critics Poll.

Scads more in country music, that is, Sunny building on a long heritage.

wow how great is her new album? she's damn good.

This is really not my sound, but I'm pretty knocked out by a lot of the lyrics (and at least she can sing).

Bottle by My Bed. It took a little before I realized that wait, this song is not about what I thought it was about.

made my best of the year