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List Price: $8.98 | | Label: RCA
Salesrank: 9627
Released: April 3, 2007 |
| Our Price: $2.49 |
| Used Price: $1.75 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Waking Up Laughing Track Listing:
1. If I Had Your Name
2. Cry Cry (Till The Sun Shines)
3. Tryin' To Find A Reason
4. For These Times
5. Anyway (Album & Digital Single Version)
6. How I Feel
7. I'll Still Be Me
8. Beautiful Again
9. Everybody Does
10. House Of A Thousand Dreams
11. Love Land
Editorial Review:
After 16 million in sales and 22 top 10 singles, some artists might be afraid to tinker with success and tempt fate. But not Martina McBride. Following up on her platinum-selling Timeless album, a poignant collection of country classics representing her first effort as solo producer, she's at the production helm again for her ninth studio release, Waking Up Laughing. Since her debut in 1992, McBride has maintained a consistent presence on the country charts, including six number one singles, and has also enjoyed crossover success in the pop and adult contemporary genres. Always striving for new artistic heights, McBride is breaking new ground by serving as producer, writer and artist for her latest album, which includes three songs she co-wrote with the Warren Brothers and other top songwriters.
Description of Waking Up Laughing:
Martina McBride has long been a champion of music as social consciousness, particularly for abused women ("Independence Day") and children. On Waking Up Laughing, her ninth album and the follow-up to Timeless, her platinum-selling album of country classics, she advances the theme while expanding it. While two songs explore the issue of unwed mothers (particularly the exquisite "Love Land," which closes the album), and another, "Beautiful Again," touches on child sexual abuse, her overall repertoire embraces the wholeness of family, and of standing strong together in the face of adversity and defeat. Musically, McBride has always proved to be an elegant thorn--her song selection is often inspired (and here, she co-wrote three tunes, including the skyscraping single "Anyway"), but she has tended to use her huge, ride-the-wave soprano full-tilt, without employing the subtle shadings that would make her even more emotionally resonant. On Waking Up Laughing she seems to have worked on the problem, yet in her second foray as solo producer, she still tends to gild the lily instrumentally--inflating string bridges between choruses, for example, or loading the opening country-pop track, "If I Had Your Name," with a Southern-rock guitar break, a listen-to-me fiddle showcase, a Celtic guitar intro, and a close that brings to mind George Harrison's sitar in play-it-backward mode. That said, she makes fine use of what sounds like a black female choir on the uplifting "For These Times," and wisely keeps the haunting break-up ballad "Tryin' to Find a Reason" (with Keith Urban's harmony vocals and guitar solo) lean and affecting. As McBride works to refine her pastiche of creativity, commerciality, and social awareness, she slyly takes more chances than one might think, all the while rallying old fans and making new ones. --Alanna Nash
Waking Up Laughing Reviews:
Most Beautiful Voice 
2009-07-11 - Martina has the most beautiful voice ever. I love every song on this album and listen to it daily. A house of a thousand words is haunting and beautiful.
Up and Down 
2008-11-02 - Let me preface this by saying that this was the first Martina McBride album I ever bought. I have since bought a few of her earlier albums. 'Waking Up Laughing' is an album that is very pleasant and endearing to listen to over-all, but in spots the lyrics are downright clutsy. I am not quite sure why some country artists feel the need to reaffirm their faith in God in songs to the general public--can't we figure that out for ourselves? She is sweet and she is good and all that but somehow I can't get around the fact that she has to spell that out so often. Martina works the same sort of material, in the same vein as Patty Loveless, but Patty did it in a way that does not make you feel below her-- she's just one of us. Martina's voice is beautiful, but I think it may have dropped half-an-octave. She sounds like she is pushing it a bit on many songs. I do, however, recommend this album.
I will continue Anyway 
2008-09-25 - Martina McBride sang a song titled Anyway and this has fit right in my life. I have been through so much in my life from my past to the present and at times it is difficult to live with DEPRESSION. The good lord above has dealt me quite a bit in life but for some reason he thinks I was a person to take it all. In my past a person just left my life, no reason or explanation was given to me, through the years I have lost people due to death and then living in this world today at not being 100 percent happy ,but chose to move to another state after 31 years is insane. Though i have been through so much of good times and sad times, tough times, I have not given up with my faith in the lord. I pray everyday and several times and hope that I continue to be blessed. I just do it anyway . Thank you Martina
Wanted to love it but.... 
2008-09-04 - Martina McBride has an amazing, beautiful, strong voice. But I did not like this album at all. It was so formulaic and commercial sounding that it was almost insulting to her audiences' intelligence.
There were one or two decent songs but that was about it. Strangely, there was one song that had this upbeat, happy feel, but it was about a very sad, dark subject matter and felt very odd.
I love her voice and I'm sure she's a good person with a big heart but I put this one away and won't ever listen to it again.
I'll listen to some music samples next time she releases another one.
Great country music
2008-06-03 - Fantastic country music by a great country artist. This is a must- have CD for Martina fans.
