Rimes can't fight the spotlight

By REBECCA BARRY

In a mass of bronco-bucking Kylies and Madonna-smooching Britneys, a photo of LeAnn Rimes in a lacy, white negligee, gripping a teddy bear, seems rather tame.

But it - one of many pouting shots among her latest album's artwork - is a telling picture when you consider eight years ago she was the cherub-faced country-pop singer whose multi-platinum-selling, Grammy Award-winning album Blue immortalised her as an adolescent Patsy Cline.

"I grew up!" she says, on the line from Nashville, Tennessee. "It's so funny for people to say I've sexed up my image. I don't wear anything I'm not comfortable in. I'm not taking off my clothes. I still see myself as a role model for kids. I figure, if I feel comfortable to show my work to a child, then it's great."

Still, it's hard to imagine Santa dropping her album, Twisted Angel, down the chimney with such steamy tracks as Tic Toc: "When you touch me I lose control and start to shake, Your love is so good I ain't gotta fake".

Even her mother, she admits, had trouble accepting the first album she wrote as an adult.

More importantly, says Rimes, Twisted Angel was her first album as executive producer and co-writer, an opportunity that allowed her to experiment with R&B, dance and blues. It's the first time she has felt in control of her career, after years of commercially successful albums and more than 20 hit singles, such as her cover of How Do I Live, the longest-running single on the Billboard Hot 100. The first real impression she made outside the United States was with Can't Fight The Moonlight, her hit contribution to the soundtrack of the girlpower movie Coyote Ugly.

"I wasn't so much a puppet - I was just young," she says. "I was supposed to be just going through high school and not learning about contracts and the way the business works but I'm glad I did because it now makes me much more of a businesswoman as a 21-year-old. I really needed to become my own person with my own style."

The crunch came when, at 18, Rimes sued her father, ex-manager and label Curb Records for releasing an album she claims she had no part in. She even wrote a memo to fans from her official website, discouraging them from buying it.

Things are back to normal now, she says, with Twisted Angel released on Curb and her relationship with her father restored. She often visits him on his ranch in Nashville with her husband, with whom, she offers rather strangely, she has been sleeping for the past year and a half.

"I kind of stayed out of the limelight for a couple of years," she says.

"I wanted to be normal and grow up just as a normal person. When I came back I think people were a little shocked just because my look, my face shape, everything had changed."

Life Goes On, the album's hit single that relaunched her career last year, seems a pretty accurate representation of where she's at.

"I was such a good kid, such a good girl. I've been through a lot and always having to just fight for what I want - on the one hand it makes me a stronger person and I've still got a lot to go. I've been in this business for eight years but it's not over. It's only beginning for me.

"I can only be who I am. And the cool thing I think about me, is that sometimes other artists get caught up in something they're not. I'm just trying to be myself."

Performance

* Who: LeAnn Rimes

* Where: Bruce Mason Centre, Takapuna

* When: Thursday

* Also: Album Twisted Angel is out now