Rimes has long insisted she doesn't need to "live" the songs she sings; she refers to herself as an actress reading a script, playing a role, inhabiting characters. It's a weak copout, the arrogant presumption of a girl with more ability than smarts, a singer who takes the most ham-fisted material and then beats it further into submission. She might well read the words just fine, but she doesn't seem to understand a single one of them.

Maybe this is all she has to offer. Maybe hers is just the ignorance of youth. Maybe, like Houston and Dion and even post-1973 Streisand, Rimes couldn't tell a good song from a bad song, just like the audience; maybe she's doomed to burn out before she's old enough to drink or, legally, have sex with one of those 19-year-olds. But it'd be sad to think a career that began with so much promise, even if it belonged to someone else, had turned into so much rubbish. But Sittin' is standin' on top of a pile of trash growing larger every week, it seems. LeAnn would be wise to stay out of the studio for a few years and get off the road, though her management has her playing 100 more shows before the end of the year. It'd be reprehensible if she didn't seem such a willing participant.

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