Album Review – Melissa Carper – “Borned In Ya”

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#511 and #570.8 (Western Swing, Jazz-inspired Americana) on the Country DDS.

It has been quite joyous and remarkable to see Melissa Carper blossom from the consummate side player into the serious solo artist we all knew she could be when watching her perform with others. Now on her third original album in four years while continuing to collaborate on in projects like The Wonder Women of Country, you can add the adjective “prolific” to Melissa’s resume along with “accomplished” and “critically-acclaimed.”

On Borned In Ya, Melissa Carper leans into her strengths even more by worrying less about genre, and more about era, emphasizing what is quietly brilliant about her approach to songwriting, and placing her songs in the caring hands of producers Andrija Tokic and Dennis Crouch, along with musicians like Chris Scruggs, Billy Contreras, Jeff Taylor, and Rory Hoffman. It all comes together with enviable results.

This is the music you would expect to come floating out of the horn of an old Victrola rolling along the grooves of a 78rpm, ingratiating itself to a room furnished in crushed velvet. Borned In Ya immediately transports you back to a period where the roots of American music hadn’t exactly formed separate genres just yet, and the corrosive touch of technology was decades away from interfering with the pureness of human expressions.

There is ample console steel from Chris Scruggs and fiddle from Billy Contreras on the album. But Borned In Ya also boasts a lot of horns and strings, giving it Big Band and jazz-era notions to go along with its country roots. Though Carper includes country legends like Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn as strong influences, it’s Chris Scruggs who coined her the “Hill-Billie Holiday” in the way Carper embraces the 1940s in her vocal delivery.


One of Melissa Carper’s early “hits” was the song “Would You Like To Get Some Goats?” It was the way such a simple expression encapsulated the intimate and sincere notion of love better than any direct reference even could that made the song so fetching. On Borned In Ya, Melissa Carper does this time and time again in clever and inviting songs that you just want to cozy up with. The idea that “Your Furniture’s Too Nice” and it won’t work for Carper and her doggy to crawl on is the kind of sentiment Carper is perfect at delivering.

Fellow Wonder Woman of Country, Brennen Leigh, also helps co-write a couple of the album’s best selections. This includes “Let’s Get Outta Here,” which is one of the album’s more classic country-sounding cuts, as well as the excellent “Let’s Stay Single Together.” Letting little gems of writing carry the songs is the genius of this album.

And maybe most importantly, with the title track, Melissa Carper reinforces the notion that lot of folks in country and roots music feel strongly, which is to make this music, you can’t just use it as a stepping stone or a stylistic notion. Either it drips from your pores and is ingrained in your bones, or you’re just a visitor. Those who were born to make this music and have devoted their lives to it like Carper deserve the preferential treatment that sometimes celebrities from outside of the country and roots world often receive when they decide to “go country.”

Borned in Ya is probably the least “country” of Melissa Carper’s last three albums. But it also feels like that doesn’t matter because it’s also the album that’s most distinctly Melissa Carper. The first two albums in this set were Melissa reaching for her true self. On Borned in Ya, she goes all in, facilitated by the production team that is willing to take a song wherever it wants to go. The results are entertaining and transportive to a different time for an appreciative audience.

8.1/10

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