Country Music Made Me Do It

Patrick doesn’t write weepy songs about cowboys and rock stars who leave her in the dust. She’d rather do the leaving, and her self-assured ballads find her breaking hearts, raising hell, and being drunk in love with country music. Her soaring second album was written shortly after moving to Nashville, and you can feel her creative bliss in each crackling croon (“The Buzz” traces the highs of being on stage). Her only mushy moment comes when she dreams out loud about an inimitable country legend: “If you want to be the one I give my heart to,” she sings, “ask yourself, 'What would George Strait do?'"