Lydia Loveless takes control of her music, no matter what anyone else says

For Lydia Loveless, the effort to pigeonhole her music has become almost as big a part of the promotional cycle for a new album as discussing the songs on the records.

Loveless, 27, has been a touring musician for nearly a decade, but the early accolades she received in the press have become an unexpected quagmire in recent years.

Loveless – appearing at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro Friday and Saturday nights for rare solo shows – has been a perennial critical darling since the 2011 release of “Indestructible Machine.” It was her first album for the Chicago-based roots label Bloodshot Records, but the label of “honky-tonk punk” that followed has been hard to shake. Even after the release of last year’s “Real,” arguably the singer’s first album to so openly embrace her love for pop, many fans still expect any Loveless song to fit snuggly within the alt-country genre.

Take her newest release, this year’s “Boy Crazy and Single(s),” for example. The new album is a collection of both Loveless’ 2013 EP “Boy Crazy” and assorted non-album singles and B-sides from her career, which should all be recognizable to her fans. Yet perhaps the tracks getting the most buzz are the three pop covers featured, inventive reimaginings of cuts from the recording catalogues of Prince, Elvis Costello and Kesha.

“I like to cover (songs) that are fun to play around with, particularly if we’re going to be recording them in the studio,” Loveless says in a phone interview before her Carrboro shows. “It’s important to do something that isn’t the exact same thing that you’ve done before, to allow yourself to experiment a little.”

Experimentation is something she’s been able to do quite a bit during her 10-year career, almost by necessity after a disastrous experience on her debut album, 2010’s “The Only Man.” Loveless, a rookie to the studio recording process at the time, was crestfallen to find that the finished product sounded more like the slick production found on female mainstream pop-country artists’ records at the time.

“I don’t think it’s really that poppy, as much as it’s just hokey. I think pop is an art form, and that album is a pile of crap,” the singer says with a laugh.

“Being a pop artist isn’t any easier than what I do now, as it’s a situation where you are being constantly groomed, by management and record labels,” she said. “It’s more that in Americana, you are allowed to be a mildly overweight, drinking and cursing 27-year-old female. No one can really tell you what to do as an Americana artist, and I am allowed to have complete control over my life, instead of the Carrie Underwood-type of singer that I believe the folks behind that album were trying to go for.”

While being in control of her art has been a successful career move thus far for Loveless, it has also been an example of just how strong the young singer’s work ethic is. In a climate that sees many – if not most – recording artists take multiple-year breaks between releases, Loveless has shown a willingness to have a completed project on the shelves for her fans nearly every year since first debuting. To hear her explain it, it’s less about any prodigious approach to the material as much as working out of necessity.

“I don’t want to work at McDonald’s, so that helps (motivate me),” Loveless acknowledges. “I really don’t have any other options; I made pretty sure of that by starting to play music so young, and it’s what I have always enjoyed. I can’t really picture myself doing anything else.

“Maybe when I’m older, someone may want me to perform surgery on them,” she says with a laugh. “But right now, I think I should just stick to singing songs.”

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 1:19 PM with the headline "Lydia Loveless takes control of her music, no matter what anyone else says."