Top Ten Songs by Lori McKenna
What are the Top Ten Songs by Lori McKenna? It depends who you ask. Faith Hill would say “Fireflies”. After all, she chose it as the title track for her most recent, very successful album. If you ask the guy with a hell of an instinct for talent who found her singing over dozens of unappreciative voices in a dark local bar, he would say, “Pour”. It’s Lori’s sincere account of the sometimes inevitability of love. If you ask Lori’s family and friends, the ones she grew up with in a little town outside of Boston, they would refuse to answer- it’s impossible to choose. It would be asking them to choose a favorite child. If you ask me, I think it’s the next ten- the ones that I’ve never heard. They exist, but nowhere that you or I can see.
This kind of talent isn’t learned; it is born from somewhere most of us cannot ever understand, and nurtured out into the open. The artwork that Lori shares each time she puts pen to paper, and finger to strings is a blessing to both artist and admirer. It is a fulfillment to dreamers everywhere that populates empty places you never realized you had an option to fill.
I was there the first few years after Lori was “found” in that dark bar. I worked nights at the tavern where she was asked to perform. I sat among, like, 4 other tables on Sunday mornings listening to this beautiful voice escape from a petite young mom who had so much to say and she said it through her songs.
The words were my own, my dreams and my hopes and my regrets and fears. They were also yours, and our neighbor’s and our girlfriends’. This woman’s ability to narrate the hearts of women everywhere is as innate as the melody she masters each time up to the Mic. Even our guys loved the music. They felt the energy and the talent and loved being a part of watching her emerge. Maybe they even used her words to understand us a little better.
From intimate local taverns to larger newsworthy venues, she filled house after house. Never was there a need to request a listening room- that’s why they were there. Each time we watched her on the stage we would say, “This girl is gonna make it”. And then she did.
While playing the newsworthy venues turned into writing songs for Nashville heroes, we watched in awe as that girl we knew would get there, got there. We’ve seen her on New England documentaries. We’ve watched her on Oprah sitting next to the one and only Faith Hill talking about the three songs that made it to Faith’s new album, one of which was just released on video, “Stealing Kisses”. And we stand in line along with tens of thousands of others waiting for her next release to get another little piece of that something that fulfills us.
Somehow in the midst of her emergence, she managed to fine- tune the art of balance as her family grew during those years. Lori and her high-school-love-turned-husband had 5 children while she continued to settle into that place that we all hope and never imagine we’ll find, where real world and passion peacefully share space. That’s what makes Lori McKenna real to us. And that’s what will most likely keep her real.
So just when you think you’ve never heard of Lori McKenna, check out her website, buy her CD’s- buy all of them. And then try to choose the Top Ten. Just try. Check out Faith Hill’s interpretation of Lori’s McKenna’s artwork on the “Fireflies” album. And although I prefer to spin my Lori McKenna CD over Faith Hill’s, what a treat it is as a fan to know that the words that have touched my soul for almost 10 years touched the same place in Faith Hill, and now so many more.
My Top Ten favorite Lori McKenna songs? The ones she’s working on in her kitchen tonight after her kids go to bed 10 miles up the road from my house. I consider it a privilege to have watched her talent grow like it has and look forward to the next chapters in her real-life dream come true.
