Lari White

Biography Early life Lari Michele White was born May 13, 1965, in Dunedin, Florida. Her parents, Larry and Yvonne White, were both school teachers. White took piano lessons starting at age four, and continued to play throughout her childhood despite losing her left pinky finger in an accident. White made her first national appearance in 1988 on the television talent show You Can Be a Star on the former TNN (The Nashville Network); she won first prize, including a recording contract with Capitol Records Nashville. She released one single through Capitol titled "Flying Above the Rain", which she wrote with Lisa Silver. When it failed to chart, White was dropped from Capitol's roster without releasing anything else. She also did radio and television commercial jingles in this time span.

In 1993, the label released her debut album Lead Me Not. Both "What a Woman Wants" and the title track received music videos which were aired on CMT and TNN. The former was the first country music video to be shot in Europe; specifically, at a setting in Rome. Smith also played guitar on the album, while Crowell, Claudia Church, Russ Taff, and Radney Foster provided background vocals. Brian Mansfield of AllMusic noted the musical variety on the album, but thought that this variety kept the album's singles from being successful on the charts. Alanna Nash shared a similar opinion in Entertainment Weekly, describing the album as "both dazzling in its diversity and confusing in its direction."

1994–1995: Wishes In 1994, RCA Nashville released White's next studio album titled Wishes. The album was also her most commercially successful. It accounted for three consecutive top-ten entries on the Billboard country charts between then and 1995: "That's My Baby", "Now I Know", and "That's How You Know (When You're in Love)". Of these, "Now I Know" was her highest-ranking single with a peak of number five in 1995, while the other two both peaked at number ten. White said that the collaborations with Cannon came during writing sessions with him on his front porch at his home in Nashville, Tennessee. Other contributing songwriters included Verlon Thompson, Suzi Ragsdale, Tom Shapiro, and Chris Waters. Garth Fundis produced the album; he also sang backing vocals on it alongside Thompson, Cannon, and Hal Ketchum, the last of whom did so on "That's How You Know". "That's My Baby", upon its release, had a music video which received rotation on VH-1. Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Johnny Loftus praised White's "torchy vocal" along with the "grit" of the musicianship. Pete Couture of the Tampa Bay Times called the album "a meditation on love", and praised the vocal performances on the singles in particular.

On May 15, 1995, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gave Wishes a gold certification for shipments of 500,000 copies in the United States. White also received a nomination by the Academy of Country Music awards for Best New Female artist. White accompanied this with an acoustic set at Fan Fair (now CMA Music Festival) in 1994, followed by her first tour in 1995. She also starred in XXX's and OOO's, a 1994 television pilot for CBS. Despite this, the video has since been made available online via Vevo. Writing for Country Standard Time, McVey stated that "With grittier-style vocals, a lot of attitude and definite musical growth, White offers up an album that has finally seen her come into her own". He found influences of contemporary R&B and blues in White's delivery and production. Jim Ridley of New Country magazine praised the album's concepts and the cover songs, along with the slide guitar work of Mike Henderson and the vocal contributions from Lynne and Yearwood, but criticized Josh Leo's production as "slick and syrupy".

White and Cannon co-wrote and sang backing vocals on "The Lonely", a track from Toby Keith's 1996 album Blue Moon. She also co-wrote and sang duet vocals on Travis Tritt's mid-1997 single "Helping Me Get Over You", from his album The Restless Kind. which had previously been released as a single from the 1995 Sparrow Records multi-artist compilation Amazing Grace: A Country Salute to Gospel. She covered another hymn, "There Is Power in the Blood", for the soundtrack of the 1997 Robert Duvall movie The Apostle. After The Best of Lari White, she exited RCA.

1998–1999: Stepping Stone alt=Country music singer Toby Keith singing into a microphone, holding the neck of a guitar with his left hand while his right hand points upward. White's third recording contract came in 1998 when she signed to Lyric Street Records, then a newly founded country music label owned by Disney Music Group. "Only God (Could Stop Me Loving You)" was later recorded by Canadian country band Emerson Drive on their 2002 self-titled album, and "Flies on the Butter (You Can't Go Home Again)" by Wynonna Judd on her 2003 album What the World Needs Now Is Love. Jana Pendragon of AllMusic wrote that "while most of the material on this project is not worthy of her talent, she still makes a good showing all across the board." She considered White's vocals the strongest on "Flies on the Butter (You Can't Go Home Again)" and "On a Night Like This".

2000–2017: Later music career and acting White ended her contract with Lyric Street in 2000 when label executives wanted her to record in a more country pop style than her previous albums. After the film, she placed her musical career on hiatus. She returned in 2004 with the self-released album Green Eyed Soul. Unlike her previous albums, this one focused more on rhythm and blues and soul music; Also during this time span, she produced Billy Dean's 2004 album Let Them Be Little and Toby Keith's 2005 album White Trash with Money.

White continued acting in Broadway theatre in the 2000s. One of her roles in this timespan was an original cast member of the Broadway musical Ring of Fire, a musical tribute show to Johnny Cash featuring renditions of his songs. In 2007, she debuted a cabaret production called My First Affair. The cabaret show was at the Oak Room cabaret at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan, New York City, on February 12, 2007. The show's set list included both Broadway standards and songs that White wrote herself. Also in 2007, twelve tracks from this production were released on an album of the same name. The album was released on April 6, 2007 on Skinny White Girl Records.

White and Cannon co-wrote Sarah Buxton's late-2008 single "Space", as well as Danny Gokey's 2010 single "I Will Not Say Goodbye". In 2014, a group of twenty-four authors and songwriters assembled a collection of stories in a book entitled The Shoe Burnin': Stories of Southern Soul. Included alongside the hardback publication is an audio CD including eighteen original works by the songwriters featured in the book. White is a featured storyteller in The Shoe Burnin as well as the producer of the audio component of the project. In 2017, she released a pair of extended plays titled New Loves and Old Friends. The former consisted of new songs, while the latter included re-recordings of her hit singles. Collaborators on the latter included Buxton, Cannon, Dan Dugmore, and Charlie Worsham. Matt Bjorke of Roughstock wrote that White "gives us reason to believe in classic storytelling and songwriting and makes a case that we should get to hear more of this brilliant kind of music somewhere".

Musical styles White's music is defined by her singing voice and stylistic variety. Dave Scheiber of the Tampa Bay Times wrote of White that she had a "strong, crystalline voice that smoothly blends country, rock, pop, and blues stylings". Bjorke compared her voice to Bonnie Raitt and Diana Krall; he also thought that the New Loves and Old Friends projects showed influences of jazz and soul music. Couture wrote of White's delivery on "Now I Know" that she "builds from an understated, almost confessional reading, to one of powerful defiance on the chorus." Prior to their marriage, Cannon had co-written her single "What a Woman Wants"; he would also write "That's My Baby" and "That's How You Know (When You're in Love)". White and Cannon founded the Skinny White Girl label on which White released her later albums; the two also built their own recording studio and founded a second label called Nashville Underground.

In September 2017, just months after the release of her New Loves and Old Friends EPs, White was diagnosed with cancer. Exploratory surgery in October 2017 revealed advanced peritoneal cancer. She died in Nashville, Tennessee, on January 23, 2018, at the age of 52.

Journalist Joseph Fenity announced plans in mid-2025 to create a documentary on White, as well as archival of her music, in a project called the Lari White Legacy Project. The documentary will include previously-unseen footage of the singer as well as archived interviews with her. White was inducted into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame in June 2025.

DiscographyStudio albums'''Lead Me Not (1993)Wishes (1994)Don't Fence Me In (1996)The Best of Lari White (1997)Stepping Stone (1998)Green Eyed Soul (2004)My First Affair'' soundtrack (2007)