Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams is an American singer and songwriter who received critical acclaim for her label-defying music, which ranged from folk to country to rock.

Williams, whose father was the poet Miller Williams, began writing songs after borrowing a guitar at age 12. She later studied guitar and then voice, but she never learned to read music. Early musical influences included Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and especially Bob Dylan. Miller Williams introduced his daughter to some of his friends, among them the notable writers Allen Ginsberg, Flannery O’Connor, and James Dickey; this exposure strongly influenced her lyrics.

With the enthusiastic reception in 2007 of the hit album West, Williams seemed to have finally earned the high level of commercial success that many believed she deserved. It was followed by Little Honey (2008) and Blessed (2011), both of which also found acclaim. In 2014 Williams resolved her problems working with commercial record labels by founding her own label, Highway 20 Records, and that same year she released the double album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. A second double album, The Ghosts of Highway 20, appeared in 2016. She reworked the songs of Sweet Old World to good effect for This Sweet Old World (2017). The unsparing Good Souls Better Angels (2020) focused on politics with righteous anger and was generally praised.