The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #162

#162: "Like Water into Wine" (2000) - Gretchen Peters

Gretchen Peters made her way down Music Row following the trailblazing path of songwriters such as Steve Earle, Nanci Griffith, and Lyle Lovett, artists--like Peters herself--who refuse to let Nashville tamper with the songwriting process. While Earle, Griffith, and Lovett all gained fame with their idiosyncratic solo careers, Peters stayed behind the scenes writing hit songs for country artists such as George Strait ("Chill of an Early Fall"), Pam Tillis ("Let That Pony Run"), Trisha Yearwood ("On a Bus to St. Cloud"), Martina McBride ("Independence Day"), and Patty Loveless ("You Don't Even Know Who I Am"). Her songs weren't of the typical cookie-cutter variety, though, as they all showed great lyrical depth while still being able to hook the listener. The depth hails from one main lyrical theme: self-actualization.

The lyrical realization has come in the form of personal, spiritual, and sexual freedom as well as escaping repression of the personal, the spirtitual, and the sexual. Nowhere do all three of Peters's main motifs better conjoin than in "Like Water Into Wine," a song best known for Patty Loveless's version. Now, Loveless has a beautiful voice, and is a fine interpreter, but her forte is the overtly passionate and emotional; subtlety--though she's no slouch, no sir--isn't her strong suit, as Loveless's powerful voice has a tendency to overwhelm small, quiet moments. That's the case with her version of "Like Water Into Wine"--she oversings it, and she misses the nuances.

It's Waters's singing that perfectly captures the subtle, scintillating, and sublime mixture of the spirtitual and the sexual--the sacred and the profane--that oh-so-easily could tumble into caricature or vulgarity or blasphemy. Waters handles it perfectly. Her voice quivers slightly and her tenderness rises to the fore, and that tender quality--that vulnerability, that obeiscance to a force (alcohol or love or sex or God or all put together, probably the latter) greater than the self--is also an intimate one, and those qualities in her voice matched with the best lyrics of any love song this decade make for a record that open its heart and arms and spirit and, uh, libido to let us in and hold us until we--as "miracles of science" and "accidents divine"--come to know ourselves--as best we dare--consummately. Peters's record here can be our own personal Jesus; we just have to reach out and touch faith--and she'll be there.