Three Decades Later Wrecking Ball Entered The Grammy Hall Of Fame
The Recording Academy selected the album for the Grammy Hall of Fame and confirmed a significance no radio programmer could have measured in 1995
She was no longer being invited to the party
By 1995 country radio had mostly stopped calling Emmylou Harris so instead of trying to sound younger she hired the producer behind U2 and Bob Dylan and made one of the most important records of her career
Emmylou Harris was 48 and deeply respected and increasingly absent from mainstream country radio
Her 1993 album Cowgirlβs Prayer had failed to produce a Top 40 country single and Harris understood what was happening and years later she described it plainly
Rather than chase whatever Nashville programmers wanted next Elektra gave her unusual freedom to choose her own direction
Daniel Lanois Offered Uncertainty Instead Of A Formula
Her answer was Daniel Lanois and Lanois was hardly the obvious Nashville choice
He had built atmospheric records with U2 and Peter Gabriel and Bob Dylan and Harris had become fascinated with both his solo album Acadie and Oh Mercy by Dylan
She did not know exactly what kind of record they would make and that uncertainty was part of the appeal
They began building Wrecking Ball around texture rather than conventional country polish and the sessions moved through New Orleans and Nashville and San Francisco
Reverb hung around the voice of Harris and percussion became heavier and electric guitars drifted in and out of the arrangements
U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. played on the record while Neil Young and Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams and others entered the project from different corners of American roots music
Harris even recorded May This Be Love by Jimi Hendrix alongside songs by Dylan and Young and Gillian Welch
The Roots Stayed Underneath The New Atmosphere
For listeners who knew her from Together Again and Blue Kentucky Girl or the Hot Band the sound could feel almost disorienting
But the roots had not disappeared because country and folk and gospel and bluegrass were still underneath the record and Lanois had simply changed the air around them
That distinction mattered because Wrecking Ball was not Harris abandoning country so much as demonstrating how far its emotional language could travel once the usual studio rules were removed
The album won the 1996 Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album and became a major artistic turning point for Harris
More importantly its mixture of country tradition and singer songwriter material and experimental production arrived just as the modern Americana movement was beginning to take shape
Harris had been pushed toward the edge of mainstream country and from there she helped show an entire generation of roots musicians how much territory existed beyond it
She did not chase the party and she found another room and that room became an opening rather than a retreat for roots music itself