![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/kellie-pickler-Dec-2011.jpg\" "\\"kellie-pickler-Dec-2011\\"")
KELLIE PICKLER<\/h1>\nKELLIE PICKLER<\/h1>\nThe country songbird\u2019s third album offers a shot of something a little stronger \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhere\u2019s Tammy Wynette when you need her?\u201d sings Kellie Pickler on the opening cut of her third and latest album, 100 Proof<\/em>. The tune refers to a broken love affair, but Pickler might just as well be pointing the question toward modern-day country music itself. As a child in North Carolina, Pickler\u2019s grandparents fed her a steady diet of songs by legends like Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton\u2014so it\u2019s no wonder she\u2019s eager to hear the sounds of fiddle and steel guitar on her own recordings. \u201cI definitely love those instruments,\u201d says Pickler, 25. \u201cMy best friends and family all know that the traditional stuff is what I\u2019m most comfortable with. That\u2019s the direction I wanted to go in with my music.\u201d<\/p>\n But for a modern country star who\u2019s racked up eight Top 30 singles in six years, an old-school move is bound to be met with resistance. \u201cIt\u2019s tricky when you go into the studio,\u201d Pickler says. \u201cWhile this is the most involved I\u2019ve been with an album, you don\u2019t have complete control and you\u2019re not calling all the shots. The music business is struggling and you have to keep up with the market. So there are songs I wanted cut, but didn\u2019t. Maybe one day I\u2019ll be able to. They say history repeats itself, and hopefully one day there will be room for\u00a0traditional country again.\u201d<\/p>\n Pickler was nonetheless able to put her own stamp on 100 Proof<\/em>, a versatile collection that ranges from soulful ballads to sassy rockers. She wrote six songs, working with esteemed Nashville tunesmiths such as her husband of one year, Kyle Jacobs, and enlisted producers Frank Liddell and Luke Wooten to create an edgier sound than that heard on her self-titled 2008 sophomore effort. \u201cOn the last album, we went for what we thought would get played on the radio,\u201d Pickler says. \u201cThis album began with me in the studio with just an acoustic guitar, singing my favorite songs.\u201d<\/p>\n After the lengthy wait between albums, Pickler is anxious to share the fruit of her work. \u201cAll I\u2019ve ever wanted to do is sing and be on the radio,\u201d says Pickler, who first rose to fame in 2006 as a finalist on TV\u2019s American Idol<\/em>. \u201cI was 19 and green when I first started. I didn\u2019t have studio experience and I\u2019d never been on a big stage. I\u2019ve learned now how to be an entertainer, but I still feel like I\u2019m a new artist.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013Blake Boldt<\/p>\n KELLIE PICKLER The country songbird\u2019s third album offers a shot of something a little stronger \u00a0 \u201cWhere\u2019s Tammy Wynette when you need her?\u201d sings Kellie Pickler on the opening cut of her third and latest album, 100 Proof. The tune refers to a broken love affair, but Pickler might just as well be pointing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[3032,3162,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5106"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5109,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5106\/revisions\/5109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"