Martina McBride - The Way That I Am

While Martina Mcbride's blend of traditional country and progressive folk styles -- along with her powerful, remarkable voice -- got country audiences to sit up and take notice in 1992, it was The Way That I Am, and most notably its Gretchen Peters-penned single "Independence Day," that blew minds. While the song itself -- told from the point of view of a surviving daughter of an alcoholic wife-beater and an abused, long-suffering wife and mother -- ends in a tragedy of suicide and death, it is nonetheless a redemptive song that makes no moral judgments yet asks real questions about what "independence" actually means. Read More