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20 Artists Who Crossed Over to Country (and How They Fared): Beyoncé, Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Bon Jovi and More
A look back at singers that tried crossing over from rock, pop or R&B to country, from Ray Charles to Kid Rock, Jessica Simpson and Steven Tyler.
She’d made her official exit from the genre by the time she released 2015’s “Picking Up the Pieces” on the Sugar Hill label, at which point she said she was “going back to my folk/American roots that I began with.” She did still record in Nashville with some of the city’s finest, even if she’d abandoned hopes of making her mark in mainstream country. At a time, in 1982, when some people were still a little bit afraid of his mercurial, post-punk attitude, he did the scariest thing he could have possibly done: went to Nashville and cut a very traditional country covers record, “Almost Blue,” with the producer for George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Billy Sherrill. The 1981 record, “Just a Lil Bit Country,” consisted of proven songs like Tammy Wynette’s “Til I Get It Right” and even Kris Kristofferson’s “If You Don’t Like Hank Williams.” It was not a complete outlier in her career, as she’d had a big R&B hit with a Haggard cover four years earlier, but it was radical enough.
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