Watch: Shelby Lynne’s vintage ‘Thought It Would Be Easier’

Pop & Hiss is premiering a vintage live performance of the song “Thought It Would Be Easier” from the forthcoming 15^th anniversary reissue of Shelby Lynne’s breakthrough album, “I Am Shelby Lynne,” which helped her win the Grammy Award for best new artist of 2000, the year the album came out in the United States.

That win became one of the great head-scratchers in Grammy Awards history: The Alabama-reared singer and songwriter had been recording and releasing music for a major label -- Epic Records -- for a dozen years when Grammy voters finally discovered her and anointed her with the new artist award.

The quirk of long-overdue recognition notwithstanding, the album was important in solidifying Lynne’s artistic voice after years of attempting to fit a square peg into the round hole of Nashville convention.

After leaving Epic, Lynne found a new home at Island Records and recorded “I Am Shelby Lynne,” an album that explored emotionally deep terrain in “raw, deeply confessional numbers, most of which dealt with some sort of romantic abandonment,” L.A. Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn wrote in 2000.

“I Am Shelby Lynne” is being treated to a deluxe 15^th anniversary reissue on Oct. 7. The album was issued first in 1999 in the United Kingdom to help build word of mouth ahead of its U.S. release on Jan. 25, 2000. Lynne is also doing an “I Am Shelby Lynne” performance on Oct. 8 at Largo at the Coronet.

The original album is being packaged with bonus materials, including a DVD of her complete performance on tour in 2000 at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, a live performance that Hilburn cited as one of the most powerful of the year.

Yet for all the critical accolades it spawned, the album sold slowly and country radio largely ignored it. It reached only as high as No. 165 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and it took more than a year to get there.

On the eve of the Grammy Awards ceremony, before she was given the new artist award, Lynne told The Times: “I love my record. It was the proudest accomplishment in all my years of making records, but everything was such a struggle. ... It was hard to work and work and work and not get your music played on the radio.”

Not that it surprised her. She said then that she and her manager “never fooled ourselves into thinking it would get played on the radio. The world’s not into what I’m into with that record. It’s too dark.”

Many of the songs reflected the intense feelings, if not the gruesome specifics, emanating from the oft-told story from her adolescence (with sister singer-songwriter Allison Moorer), when her father shot their mother to death and then turned the gun on himself, while the two girls were nearby in the family house.

As for that better-late-than-never new artist Grammy?

“I worked for 13 years to get a Grammy nomination, so of course I’m thrilled,” she said before hearing her name called at the awards ceremony. “I know a win would help my career, but the nomination is vindication for me of my talent. I’d like to see this album get another chance, but if not, I’m ready to move on.”

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