In a world of faster, harder, louder, Lee Ann Womack wants something far more radical: to be real. "It just seems like music when it is most powerful hits you right between the eyes," says Lee Ann, in whom Time has noted "the clarity of a soul that realizes loss is a form of purification, a scraping away of false ideals and excess emotional baggage." Lee Ann's new Sugar Hill album, "The Way I'm Livin'," is an unvarnished collection of songs by some of America's most progressive songwriters: Hayes Carll, Mindy Smith, Buddy Miller, and Chris Knight, whose "Send It On Down" offers an agonizing portrait of a lost soul trying to find some speck of hope. Lee Ann is one of modern country's most acclaimed vocalists, but, she says, "I've never made a record like this. We only cut songs that spoke to me. I didn't think about anything else: 'What would marketing want?' 'What would promotion want?' There were no voices in my head, and I embraced songs that really, really moved me."