Greatest Hits: 1994-2004
It's unfortunate that Terri Clark gained her highest chart debut with "Girls Lie Too," a hideously cartoonish song that perpetuates stereotypes about the sexes and, by its success, about country music fans. Clark, a Canadian tomboy in a rakish and attitudinal cowboy hat, has always played on her image as an independent female yearning for a relationship as strong as her personality. That worked well on a number of early songs, especially "Better Things to Do" and on the new "One of the Guys." But clearly she's yearned to expand her subject matter, and in recording songs co-written withKim Richey,Beth Nielsen Chapman, andMary Chapin Carpenter(a live version of their "No Fear" appears here), she nurtured the questioning side of her inner singer-songwriter. Clark has never really fit any kind of niche, and one suspects she's now caught between trying to stay alive commercially and satisfying herself as an artist.Greatest Hitsis a colorful road map to the first 10 years of her journey, even as she seems to be doubling back on certain stretches of that highway.--Alanna Nash