Pam Tillis

Early life alt=Country music singer Mel Tillis is performing on a stage. Pamela Yvonne Tillis was born July 24, 1957, in Plant City, Florida. She also began taking piano lessons at this age, and taught herself how to play guitar by age 12. At age 16, she was nearly killed in a car accident. She underwent five years of surgery, including facial reconstruction. Pam described her relationship with her father as "strict", and that she often felt "alienated" from him. The label released her debut single "Every Home Should Have One" that same year. Unlike her later music, "Every Home Should Have One" was a disco song. Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey featured the singles "Killer Comfort" and "Love Is Sneakin' Up on You". While neither single charted, the former received a music video that aired on MTV.

Citing dissatisfaction with the pop music she was recording, Tillis returned to Nashville, while retaining her contract with Warner. She supported herself in this timespan by performing at various nightclubs and in her own local revues. These included Twang Night (where she sang covers of 1960s country standards) and Women in the Round (where she sang with other female songwriters). According to Tillis herself, these revues led to her gaining increased exposure throughout the city. She also supplemented her career by singing advertising jingles for Country Time powdered drink mix, Coca-Cola, and Coors beer. Prior to releasing any material of her own, Tillis and Kix Brooks (who later signed to Arista Nashville himself as one-half of Brooks & Dunn) co-wrote the promotional single "Tomorrow's World", released on Warner to honor the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. Twenty country music acts contributed vocals to the project, including Highway 101, Lynn Anderson, Vince Gill, Dan Seals, and Brooks and Tillis. The song entered the Hot Country Songs charts in May 1990, peaking at 74. Tillis also co-wrote Juice Newton's 1989 single "When Love Comes Around the Bend" (later covered by Seals in 1992) and Highway 101's 1990 single "Someone Else's Trouble Now".

Tillis made her debut on Arista Nashville in late 1990 with "Don't Tell Me What to Do". It peaked at number five on the Billboard country charts in early 1991, thus becoming her first successful single release. Marty Stuart also recorded the song for Columbia Records in 1988, although his rendition was not released until 1992. The song served as the lead single to her breakthrough album Put Yourself in My Place, Tillis had originally recorded the song while on Warner, but did not release this version at the time. The album's fifth and final single was "Blue Rose Is", another song which Tillis co-wrote. This song was less successful on the charts. Another cut from the album, "Ancient History", was later a single for the Canadian band Prairie Oyster in 1996.

Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly gave Put Yourself in My Place a "B+" rating, saying that it "shows how well she can craft smart and sassy country material...and also sell it with a commanding, big-voiced presence". Kevin John Coyne wrote in a 2007 retrospective of Tillis, "It’s easy to overlook Put Yourself in My Place when discussing Pam’s body of work because of the much stronger albums that would follow...However, that’s more of a tribute to the quality of the music to come than any deficiency of the album itself." She was also nominated by the Academy of Country Music for Top Female Vocalist five times between 1991 and 1995. Put Yourself in My Place was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in June 1992 for sales of 500,000 copies.

1992–1995: Homeward Looking Angel and Sweetheart's Dance

In 1992, Arista Nashville released Tillis's next album, Homeward Looking Angel. The album charted another top-10 hit with the Gretchen Peters composition "Let That Pony Run". After it, "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" and "Do You Know Where Your Man Is" peaked in lower chart positions. The album was certified platinum in 1995 for sales of one million copies. Roch Parisien of AllMusic called it a "very solid" album, praising the songwriting of the singles in particular. The former was nominated that year for Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals,

Sweetheart's Dance, Tillis's third Arista album, was released in April 1994. Tillis intentionally sought more songs by outside writers than on the first two Arista albums, stating that she "wanted to paint a landscape rather than a self-portrait". She also co-produced for the first time, doing so with guitarist and producer Steve Fishell. which peaked at number two on Billboard and number one on Radio & Records. This cover featured backing vocals from Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kim Richey. After it came "Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)", Tillis's only number-one single on both the Billboard and RPM charts. Its replacement was "In Between Dances", which became a top five hit by year's end. Brian Mansfield rated the album four-and-a-half stars out of five, writing that it "found the magic blend of Nashville sound, California country rock, and post-Beatles pop." John D. McLaughlin of The Province called Tillis "clear-eyed and confident", while praising the inclusion of her family on the closing track. Billboard rated All of This Love favorably, saying that Tillis "continues to mature as a singer". All of This Love became Tillis's second gold album. Contributing writers on the album were Beth Nielsen Chapman, Leslie Satcher, and Eagles member Timothy B. Schmit. One of Satcher's compositions, "I Said a Prayer", was the album's lead single. This song reached number twelve on the American country charts and number seven on the Canadian country charts. Joel Bernstein of Country Standard Time was mixed toward the album as well. He thought that "I Said a Prayer" sounded like a "sixties girl group" and said that the rest of the album "lacks her usual playfulness."

Tillis was involved in multiple collaborative efforts after the release of Every Time. One of these was recording the original song "After a Kiss" for the soundtrack to the 1999 film Happy, Texas. This song charted at number 50 on Hot Country Songs that year. Also in 1999, Tillis played several concerts with her father. In 2000, country singer Little Jimmy Dickens invited Tillis to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Marty Stuart inducted her on August 26, 2000. Kenny Chesney's 2000 single "I Lost It" featured Tillis on background vocals.

Restructuring of Arista Nashville's parent company Sony Music Nashville delayed release of Tillis's last Arista album Thunder & Roses. Originally slated for release in 2000, it was not issued until early 2001. The album included another duet with her father called "Waiting on the Wind". The pair had previously sung the song in concert several years prior. Walker and Worley alternated production duties with Dann Huff and Kenny Greenberg. Tillis herself cited the song as one that would appeal to single women. Although she originally intended to record the project independently, she signed with Epic Records' Lucky Dog branch in 2002. Titled It's All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis, the tribute album was released through Lucky Dog that same year.

In June 2003, Tillis was dropped from Lucky Dog following another label re-structuring. Despite this, she began performing her own shows in Branson, Missouri, at a theater owned by comedian Yakov Smirnoff. These shows included both her and her father's hit singles, as well as stories about her childhood. Her sister Carrie contributed backing vocals to these shows. Smirnoff had offered her the opportunity to perform there, and she accepted because she thought it would allow for a different presentation style than her standard concerts. In particular, the use of a theater allowed her to incorporate costumes into her performance. She continued to perform in Branson in 2004 with Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers. In 2005, she replaced Linda Davis as the lead act of an annual Christmas concert held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville. She continued to tour at this point, and compiled both a concert DVD and a Christmas album sold exclusively at her shows.

2007–present: Founding her own record label Tillis did not release another album until 2007, when she founded her own label called Stellar Cat. Her first album for her own label was RhineStoned. Tillis thought that being on her own label allowed her more creative freedom than before, including her decisions to market the album to Americana music formats, and to make a music video for the track "Band in the Window" despite not officially promoting it as a single. She co-produced the project with singer-songwriter Gary Nicholson. Also in 2007, the Country Music Hall of Fame opened an exhibition called "It's All Relative", featuring artifacts from Mel and Pam's music careers.

Pam Tillis has recorded two albums with Lorrie Morgan: Dos Divas and Come See Me and Come Lonely.

Tillis started a tour in 2008 that included Regina, Saskatchewan dates in January. For this tour, she sang both her and her father's songs, along with album cuts and new material. She recorded no other albums until 2012's Recollection, which comprised re-recordings of her hit singles from Arista Nashville. She chose to do this when noticing how "dated" she thought some of her old songs sounded, and relied on her road band to provide instrumentation. After she booked tour dates with Lorrie Morgan, the two artists decided to record a collaborative album called Dos Divas in 2013. The album included a mix of solo songs from each artist as well as a number of duets. They also toured together to promote this album on a tour called Grits and Glamour. Tillis, Morgan, and Terri Clark held a benefit concert in 2018 for country singer Anita Cochran after she was diagnosed with cancer. Tillis also revived Women in the Round in 2017 with Ashley Cleveland, Tricia Walker, and Karen Staley. It features twelve tracks, six of which were co-written by Tillis, as well as a cover of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings's "Dark Turn of Mind". On June 29, 2022, Tillis had been nominated for induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside Kirk Franklin, Brad Paisley, and Shania Twain, though Twain ultimately received the honor.

Musical styles Colin Larkin wrote in the Virgin Encyclopedia of Country Music in 1999 that "her powerful vocal styling may not suit everybody". Steven Wine, reviewing Looking for a Feeling for the Associated Press, said that she "has mastered the art of singing without raising her voice. She swoops and slides, yes, but most of all she smolders, an alto with a blue hue." Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly wrote of Sweetheart's Dance that "Moving beyond the attention she gained from her Kewpie doll face and piercing soprano, she’s gone the distance to incorporate all of her musical past into the country framework for an updated, '90s feel." Robert K. Oermann, in the book Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain: Tales of Romance and Tragedy, described Tillis as having a "torrid soprano", "vivid songwriting", and "enchanting wit". In an interview with Country Universe in 2020, Tillis stated that her later albums featured fewer songs she wrote than her earlier albums due to her own criticism of her work. She ultimately decided to start co-writing again on Looking for a Feeling because she considered her own writing to be "words out of [her] heart". Nash, reviewing Collection in 1994, thought that because the album contained material recorded earlier in her career, it lacked the "plucky personality and the supercharged vocals that now punch their way out of the radio". Both Nash and Larry Crowley of The Arizona Republic thought that "Spilled Perfume", which is about one woman confronting another over a one-night stand, displayed feminist themes. along with episodes of Diagnosis: Murder and Promised Land on CBS. She also appeared as herself on the American Broadcasting Company musical drama Nashville. Drag queen RuPaul, a fan of Tillis's, invited her to appear as a guest judge on an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race. She told Closer Weekly in 2019 that she divorced Mason because of his alcoholism and her concerns that she "was not ready" to be in a relationship. She assumed custody of Ben after the divorce. He occasionally toured as a member of her road band Mystic Biscuit. DiPiero co-wrote "Blue Rose Is", "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial", and "It's Lonely Out There". In 2019, she told Closer Weekly that the two divorced because she felt that their musical careers were overtaking their personal lives, although she also stated that she still considered DiPiero an "awesome person". He co-wrote Jamie O'Neal's number-one single "When I Think About Angels" along with singles by Clinton Gregory, Tammy Cochran, and Ty Herndon. Tillis' father, Mel Tillis, died at age 85 in 2017, after which Sonny began touring as a tribute act to him. Tillis' mother, Doris, died at age 79 in 2019.

Discography

Studio albums Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey (1983) Put Yourself in My Place (1991) Homeward Looking Angel (1992) Sweetheart's Dance (1994) All of This Love (1995) Every Time (1998) Thunder & Roses (2001) It's All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis (2002) RhineStoned (2007) Just in Time for Christmas (2007) Recollection (2009) Dos Divas with Lorrie Morgan (2013) Come See Me and Come Lonely with Lorrie Morgan (2017) Looking for a Feeling (2020)

Awards and nominations Year Association Category Nominated work Result