Despite having a single that nearly cracked the country Top 40 in "The Love That We Lost," Right in the Middle of It, its 1996 sequel, didn't capitalize on this buzz, so she asked to leave her contract with Mercury. Woman in the Moon, Wright's debut, arrived in 1994 to positive notices, helping her snag the Academy of Country Music award for Top New Female Vocalist. Not long after she signed a publishing deal, she inked a contract to be a recording artist for Mercury/Polydor. Soon, she'd call the Music City her home, working at Opryland and concentrating on songwriting. Between her junior and senior years in high school, Wright performed at Branson, Missouri's Ozark Jubilee show and once she wrapped up school, she continued in this vein by landing a job as an impersonator at the Opryland theme park in Nashville. By the time she was 14, she was singing professionally with a band called County Line, which claimed her father as a bassist. When she was four, she began piano lessons, picking up trumpet for the school band several years later, and starting to sing in vocal groups by age 11. Lifted Off the Ground highlighted Wright's redefining herself as a country singer who exists just on the fringe of the mainstream without abandoning her distinctive blend of the past and present.īorn in Kansas City in 1970 and raised in the nearby town of Wellsville, Kansas, Wright gravitated toward music at an early age. Wright came out as a lesbian in 2010, a move unparalleled in country music that coincided with the release of Lifted Off the Ground, an album produced by Rodney Crowell. Wright couldn't sustain her commercial success in the 2000s but she wound up writing hits behind the scenes - Clay Walker took "I Can't Sleep," a song he co-wrote with Wright, to number nine in 2004 - and pursuing riskier artistic ground starting with 2005's The Metropolitan Hotel.
This praise, which included the Academy of Country Music naming her Top New Female Vocalist in 1995, would propel Wright toward the top of the country charts, with "Shut Up and Drive" reaching 14 in 1997 and "Single White Female" going all the way to number one in 1999. For a time, Chely Wright existed in the sweet spot between traditional and contemporary country, a gift that earned her acclaim during the mid-'90s.
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