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Lyle Lovett

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Alt-country crooner Lyle Lovett is one of America's premier singer-songwriters.

Editorial

Lyle Lovett's career began as a songwriter-for-hire rather humbly behind the scenes of the music industry. By the time his 1986 self-titled debut was released, he'd marked himself out from the rest of the Texas country set, with an altogether more considered, subtle approach to songwriting - an alt-country pioneer, if you will. Critical success followed with albums like 1988's much-lauded, Pontiac, until Lovett found himself thrust into the limelight - for all the wrong reasons.

His name - and personal life - were brought to the fore following his ill-fated union with Julia Roberts in 1993. The pair's marriage dissolved only two years later. Still, heartbreak is the fodder country music feeds on, and Lovett returned in 1996 with his highest-charting album to date, The Road To Ensenada. Fans pored over the lyrics to the album, searching for clues about the life of one of Hollywood's most recognisable couples. But Lovett gave little away, instead sticking to his usual evocative tales of life for ordinary Americans living in the deep south.

Alongside his prolific recording career have been a number of acting roles, in everything from comedies Mad About You and Dharma and Greg, to big-screen rock'n'roll satire, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. With the release of this 10th album, Natural Forces, in 2009, Lovett has taken his place alongside luminaries like Lucinda Williams and Willie Nelson as a supremely skilled musical documentarian of American life.

Nick Bond, December 2009