Mary Chapin Carpenter
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Mary Chapin Carpenteris an American singer, songwriter and musician. Carpenter spent several years singing in Washington, D.C. clubs before signing in the late 1980s with Columbia Records, who marketed her as a country singer. Carpenter's first album, 1987's Hometown Girl, did not produce any singles, although 1989's State of the Heart and 1990's Shooting Straight in the Dark each produced four Top 20 hits on the Billboard country singles charts...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth21 February 1958
CountryUnited States of America
I've never... when I was having songs on the airwaves, and that sort of thing, I never felt a sense of pressure anywhere except from myself, to do things the way I wanted to do them; to feel authentic; to feel like I was presenting my true self to the world.
Dreamland is a book, but it's my song in book form. It's translated itself into a different medium.
You know, that single girl life and that sense of isolation - that doesn't leave you just like that. And that's what that song is about. I remember that, and that is imprinted on me, that sense.
I love to write songs and sing them, and I didn't really know much more than that. Somehow it's gotten to the point where a friend can say, "It's very you," and that made me feel good.
It's a marvelous feeling when someone says I want to do this song of yours because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after.
It's like the code of living by yourself. People who are single know what I'm talking about. You eat standing up, reading the paper. Or you say to yourself, this isn't even cutting it, I'm taking a TV dinner and I'm getting in bed here.
It's a marvelous feeling when someone says 'I want to do this song of yours' because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after.
I went to college and I never allowed myself to think for an instant that I would have this chance to do this.
There's timing. And then there's also certain people at the record company who worked incredibly hard and were incredibly enthusiastic about what I was doing.
I grew up listening to everything, and when I got signed to a record deal out of Nashville, that was my introduction to what was happening in country music.
When I started out, it was this sense of, "Let's put out a record and see what happens and see where you go and see how you feel and where we can take it." That was a very different world back then.
In the late 80s, artists could be signed to labels and be nurtured. It wasn't, "We're going to give you one shot, and if you don't measure up, you're gone".
I feel that it's nothing if not an incredible privilege to be able to get up on stage and play for people, and I don't ever take it for granted.
I think topical songwriting is a real gift, and it's hard not to be pedantic and show up with the sledgehammer message.