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List Price: $17.98 | | Label: Vanguard Records
Salesrank: 101629
Released: March 8, 2005 |
| Our Price: $2.33 |
| Used Price: $0.01 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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The Story of My Life Track Listing:
1. Girl You Left Me For
2. One Day at a Time
3. Ordinary
4. In a Heartbeat
5. Katie
6. Atlanta & Birmingham
7. She's Good for You
8. Not Another Love Song
9. Sunny Day
10. Getting Over You
11. Story of My Life
Editorial Review:
Deana Carter's multiplatinum 1996 debut, Did I Shave My Legs for This?, established the Nashville native as a winsome risk-taker: the Matraca Berg/Gary Harrison-penned hit "Strawberry Wine" positioned Carter as a maker of Southern--though not strictly country--music, and dared to put steamy sensuality back into the threadbare theme of lost innocence. Nine years later, she's still crossing the line and watching love slip through her fingers, though perhaps not as memorably as before. The Story of My Life, her first record for an independent label, is a full Carter showcase--she wrote, produced, and played on all eleven cuts. That's both the album's strength and its weakness. Carter starts out like a house afire with "The Girl You Left Me For," a declaration of desire ("I want your perfume on my pillowcase... I want to feel you on my fingertips") wrapped in a blanket of smart, sexy pop. But as the relationship sours in subsequent songs, Carter loses her producer's chops, even as the melodies linger. She's always been a fan of '70s pop, but inserting a Beatlesque break in the middle of "She's Good for You" is both jarring and precious, especially since other offerings, like the wistful "Not Another Love Song," seem underproduced. While Carter would do well next time to bring in a more seasoned partner behind the board, there's no denying her winsome charm as a Southern girl who has no qualms about going all the way. --Alanna Nash
The Story of My Life Reviews:
10 Good Tracks out of 11, Not Bad 
2008-12-29 - I am a Deana Carter fan and I own a number of her albums. Deana has a voice that was not cut using the typical "cookie cutter" they use in country music today. BTW, there is very little new country music that I would call good.
For the most part, the Deana albums I own are good and were worth the price I paid. But, for "The Story of My Life" album I cannot say that. I find 10 of the tracks ok but I do have a problem with track 9 "Sunny Day". Deana thanked God for her gift and the album but I do not think He gave her this song. The profanity is hard to take and ruins the song. I like to listen to songs over and over but this one I cannot take. When I copied the album to my iPod I had to unchecked track 9.
Deana, you can do better than that!
yeah, i like country music, you gotta problem with that :-) 
2008-06-08 - country music has become my music of choice these days...though most people couldn't care two flips about it, i think it's cool. it's actually become very creative, the last few years, adding more rock, blues and even hip-hop to it ( courtesy of big and rich ) to bring in new fans...while some people may not care for the changes, i think they were needed to keep country music from getting stale and to get new fans...deana's country is kinda a mix of country, rock and some blues, on one of her earlier albums, i heard a song of hers that would've easily fit on a blues album. i like the way she can switch her styles up. her songs are never twangy, but positive declarations of life. her song writing on " the story of my life" is good. on the song " the girl you left me for," deana does a twist on the bad girl theme that caught me off-guard, but in a good way. " in a heartbeat," is a wistful ballad which she pulls off brilliantly in her " little-girl" singing voice. " Katie." is the latest song about the town tease, which deana makes it worth listening to. deana and her husband james, played all the instruments on this album. why she's not bigger or better known is beyond me. she deserves to be listened to...
+1/2 -- Former country star records album her way
2007-01-27 - Carter's always seemed like an unlikely maverick, but despite a career that's been heavily buffeted by the expectations of two major labels, she's emerged with her own musical vision intact. Her multi-platinum 1996 debut CD ("Did I Shave My Legs For This?") and it's dominating trio of #1 hits marked a level of commercial success that she has neither matched, nor seemed to have sought. Her 1998 sophomore release for Capitol ("Everything's Gonna Be Alright") indulged her love of '70s pop and rock and only managed to launch a couple of tepid top-40 singles. A switch to Arista Nashville four years later found her co-producing polished adult pop with Dan Huff. The results were fetching, but again had only middling success on the charts.
Fast forward another three years. Carter's relocated to Los Angeles from Nashville (the latter, unusually for a country singer, her birthplace), she's divorced from the husband who inspired much of her debut CD's ebullience, and amidst a new relationship, and just before entering the studio she finds out that she's pregnant. That's a lot of life material from which to draw, and recording for Vanguard - known more for its classic folk releases of the '60s than its occasional country releases - she's given the freedom to write and produce the album of her dreams. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising, but the result integrates elements of all her previous releases, suggesting that while she didn't have complete control in earlier sessions, she certainly had her say. She essays her artistic fortitude in the song "Sunny Day."
Though recorded on the West Coast, Carter has clearly brought her roots with her. This sounds at least as earthy as the works she recorded in Nashville, and though she may have felt suffocated by Music City's "way of doing things," she clearly isn't in California to repudiate her country heritage. Many of these tracks would fit easily into what currently compromises country radio, but there's no crying steel or fiddle here - this is contemporary adult music, but without the glossy pop highlights of her previous outings.
Her arrangements follow the material, often starting slow and building drama with a kick of electric guitars, but the production never overshadows her words. The catchy "yeah yeah yeah" backing vocal of the album's opener is a neat hook upon which Carter hangs her distraught plea for a lost lover. Even better, the broken-hearted roadtrip ballad "Atlanta & Birmingham" opens with acoustic guitar and piano that reflect the inner-voice of the lyric's letter-to-a-lost lover. The middle part picks up as the writer herself picks up the pieces and prepares to move on, and the end settles back down as the singer gains an outside perspective.
Carter's early association with Matraca Berg (whose autobiographical "Strawberry Wine" became Carter's most recognizable hit) seems to have made an impression. Carter's songs don't have the literary edge of Berg's, but they have the same sort of keen phrases that nail a character in only a few words, and her melodies are memorably fleshed out by her own inventive production touches. Carter was clearly letting go of a relationship during the writing of this album, but her tone is more wistful than bitter, and the music follows suit.
Each of Carter's albums has its charms, but this one feels closer to the artist than any that came before. Vanguard hasn't exactly burned up the contemporary pop charts with their marketing prowess, so it's anyone's guess if they can launch this album in the contemporary pop market. Carter's touching and mature music fits nicely onto a label roster that includes Joan Osborne and Edward McCain, so perhaps the critical mass will help define her outside of Nashville circles. 4-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings. [©2007 hyperbolium dot com]
Not the Deanna Carter I know and love 
2006-02-19 - I only like two songs on this album, this album is just not Deana Carter, i miss her original stuff. I don't ever listen to this CD either. It sits collecting dust. But you be the judge.
A CD you MUST own (even if you don't like country)! 
2006-01-23 - First of all, let me say that this is my first Deana Carter CD. I hadn't heard of her until I read a glowing review of this CD in a magazine. A few weeks later, I was at my local library and saw the CD on display, and remembering that review, I checked it out. I listened to it, and I liked what heard so much that I had to play it again after I had listened to the whole CD for the first time. You see, I don't usually do that, especially with a country CD. Then, I didn't like country all that much, like I do now. I loved it so much, I ended up buying it!
So now that I have told you how I discovered this CD, let's move on to the review. This is a CD that you can listen to all the way through, and you can tell from the title that she put her heart and soul into each song. She wrote or co-wrote each song, and the album was recorded while she was pregnant. So, for Deana, this album was a labor of love, in more ways than one. It will grab you from the first song, "The Girl You Left Me For" which sounds like a lost track from an Avril Lavigne CD (and you'll have to check the cover to make sure it's Deana). There are several songs about relationships, including "Not Another Love Song", and songs about extraordinary women, like "Katie". As soon as the last song, the autobiographical "The Story of My Life", ends, you'll probably be like me the first time I heard this, and want to listen to the whole CD over again!
