Curb Records
2005
Delicious Surprise
About This Album
Not counting a Christmas album and a greatest-hits compilation, Jo Dee Messina didn't release an album between 2000's Burn and 2005's Delicious Surprise. Five years is a long, long wait between records, and Messina does what any smart artist should and pretends that the gap doesn't exist by patterning her new album after the prevailing trends in current country music. At the midpoint of the 2000s, the hottest thing around is the Muzik Mafia spearheaded by gonzo country-poppers Big & Rich, whose protégée Gretchen Wilson is the biggest new female country singer of the mid-'90s. Messina uses Wilson, or at least Wilson's rowdy redneck image, as the foundation of her comeback on Delicious Surprise, which is filled with sexy pictures of Messina, starting with her toned stomach on the back cover to a shot of her topless on a white piano in the liner notes (for those interested in such things, the poster promised on the back cover is nothing more than the large picture on the fold-out booklet, meaning that if you tack this up on your wall, your CD no longer has a booklet). Wilson's attitude is also apparent on the sassy first single, "My Give a Damn's Busted," which sports not only the funniest lyric here, but also the leanest, liveliest arrangement.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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