While I'm livin'

"Once the youngest woman to make the cover of Rolling Stone ("Hi, I'm Tanya Tucker, I'm 15, you're gonna hear from me" went the headline), few veteran country artists are more deserving of a 21st-century "re-launch" than Tucker, whose exclusion from the Country Music Hall of Fame despite two dozen charting albums and more than fifty charting singles grows more inexplicable with each passing year. If any recording warrants such renewed attention, it is the remarkable, inspiring and inspired While I'm Livin'. "I still got a long long way to go," sings Tucker on "The Day My Heart Goes Still," a tribute to late father-manager Beau. With music this good, we can only hope so".

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"Tucker's voice carries appealing scars accumulated over the years, yet she hasn't lost a whit of her pitch or force. This vocal power puts her squarely at the center of While I'm Livin', even when the songs bear Carlile's distinct, careful imprint. Carlile may be writing toward Tucker's myth, but she and the Hanseroths don't treat her with kid gloves; they allow her humor, soul, and sensuality to shine forth".

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"Nearly 50 years after the singer became a child phenom, While I'm Livin' arrives as a much-deserved course correction from Tucker. The album - part legacy-bolstering roots project, part first-person confessional - shows a more sensitive side of the former country star, so much so that Tucker was initially hesitant to record this batch of songs ... Thankfully, Tucker's latest never succumbs to old-age weariness".

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