Matraca Berg
b. 3 February 1964, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The song "Appalachian Rain", on 90s country singer Berg's first album, is about an unmarried mother moving away to have her baby, and she explained, "It is what happened to my mom; and in the song I tried to deal with how she must have felt, and what I wished had happened to my father." Berg is one of the few country singers to have been born in Nashville and her mother, Icee Berg, who died when Matraca was 20, was a songwriter and backing vocalist. Matraca Berg and Bobby Braddock wrote a US country number 1 for T.G. Sheppard and Karen Brooks, "Faking Love", and she followed it with another chart-topper, "The Last One To Know" for Reba McEntire. Her songs, usually for female artists, include "Eat At Joe's", "Diamonds And Tears", "Hey Cinderella", "Give Me Some Wheels" (all recorded by Suzy Bogguss), "Walk On" (Linda Ronstadt), "Wrong Side Of Memphis", "Everybody Knows" (Trisha Yearwood), "Black Water Bayou" (Tanya Tucker), "Wild Angels", "Cryin' On The Shoulder Of The Road" (Martina McBride), "You Can Feel Bad" (Patty Loveless), "Strawberry Wine", "We Danced Anyway" (Deana Carter) and "Calico Plains" (Pam Tillis). Her 1990 debut, Lying To The Moon, included some minor country hits. The title track has the makings of a country standard, having also been recorded by Trisha Yearwood. Strangely, Berg moved to RCA Records' pop division for her second album, which was much more melancholy. In 1997, she won the Country Music Association Song Of The Year Award for "Strawberry Wine", co-written with Gary Harrison for Deana Carter. She released a debut album for her new label Rising Tide the same year. A prolifically successful country songwriter, her own recording career tends to have become overshadowed by the success of others.
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Albums
Top Tracks
- Lying to the Moon
- Back In the Saddle
- Along for the Ride
- Back When We Were Beautiful
- The Things You Left Undone
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