I Got Your Country Right Here

For her first album released on her own imprint, Gretchen Wilson showed that she didn't need big-label backing to deliver her roughneck take on country. The opening title tune finds her name-checking her Southern-rock heroes over incendiary guitars, while the driving beat and sawing fiddles of "Work Hard, Play Harder" make her agenda even more explicit. But amid all the outlaw-and-proud-of-it country rocking, she still finds room for some tenderness, as on the spare, romantic closing ballad "I'd Love to Be Your Last."