BERRY HILL, TENN. — When Martina McBride turns up in a couple of weeks on "American Idol" to coach contestants on the finer points of singing a country song, don't be surprised if she starts quoting the adage that "less is more."
The woman who has won nine trophies from the Country Music Assn. and the Academy of Country Music, mostly for female vocalist of the year, isn't big on singers who like to showboat.
"There's just no need to make one word have 25 notes; there really isn't," says McBride, kicking back in a leather chair behind a large desk in the office she shares with her husband, John McBride, at their Blackbird Studio here just outside of Nashville, where they also live with their daughters: Delany, 12, Emma, 8, and Eva, 21 months. "It just is really not very soulful. Sometimes it is, like with Aretha [Franklin], but even she doesn't really do \o7that\f7."
If her "AI" charges on the nights of April 17 and 18 need proof that she's willing to put her money where her mouth is, she can spin them her new album, "Waking Up Laughing," which hits stores Tuesday. It does include a few wall-rattling crescendos, particularly in the first single, "Anyway," an inspirational ballad currently riding high on the country charts.
More often than not, however, McBride relies on restraint and an almost conversational delivery that establishes a more intimate rapport with listeners than singers who crank every chorus to 11, or torture syllables into submission because they can.
Overshadowed commercially during the 1990s and this decade by Shania Twain and Faith Hill, the pint-sized singer with the pipes of steel nonetheless has sold nearly 12 million albums in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. She's racked up five No. 1 singles, including "Blessed," "I Love You" and her first, "Wild Angels," and is vying for yet another top female vocalist honor from the ACM, which hands out its awards May 15 in Las Vegas.
"I never think, 'How can I show off on this song?' Sometimes, quite honestly, when I sing something really big or powerful, it's because that's the only way I can get it out," McBride says, leaning forward, elbows on her knees. "It's not like I'm constantly trying to go for that. I love singing a song that's soft and quiet, with lots of subtleties and nuances, just as well as I love singing something big like 'Where Would You Be,' " a hit for her in 2002.
