Dusty and Martha look a bit distracted, don’t they?

If Google Analytics has taught me one thing over the last few weeks, it’s that idle web surfers like looking up the words “Shelby Lynne” and “lesbian” together. With that in mind, I bring you this exchange from a recent Lynne interview with IGN‘s Todd Gilchrist. Mind you, there’s nothing overtly gay about it, but I wanted to post something here today and it was either this or a picture of Ernest Borgnine in a sailor’s cap.

IGN: When you’re putting your albums together, do you think about putting different kinds of songs together, to sort of have something for everyone, or is it as you say a matter of what’s going on in your life?

Lynne: It has to be having to do with my life, because I’m not big fan of bullsh*t, so it has to have everything to do with what I’m doing. I mean, I chose these tunes because I can relate to them, and for no particular reason. I mean, I think about Dusty in all of them, but every song I cut has something to with what I’ve either felt or I’m feeling or I’m going to feel or I’ve gone through with someone else who’s feeling it. So it’s not really that complicated, it just needs to be honest and real. For instance, I can’t imagine singing “Son of a Preacher Man,” not only because it was Dusty’s song and I would never do it, but because I can’t imagine doing those words.

IGN: Why is that?

Lynne: Because I can’t relate. You go back and hear that song and you think of me and you’ll go, hmm, okay.

And, you know, she might act like a dithering idiot when asked about her personal life, but Shelby isn’t incorrect here. I’ll even take it a step further and say that while I, like everyone else on the face of the earth, love Dusty’s version of “Son of a Preacher Man,” I’ve often felt it sounds a bit dishonest coming from her as well.

Had it been about, say, the granddaughter of a minister (cough, Martha Reeves if you’re wondering), maybe it would have sounded more authentic. She still wouldn’t have convinced me there was “only one” person who could ever reach her, not with a voice like that, and I’d still have trouble believing that Springfield wasn’t the one who suggested they go walkin’, but it would have been a start.