Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Studio album by
ReleasedJune 30, 1998
Studio
Genre
Length51:40
LabelMercury
Producer
Lucinda Williams chronology
Sweet Old World
(1992)
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
(1998)
Essence
(2001)

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, released on June 30, 1998, by Mercury Records. The album was recorded and co-produced by Williams in Nashville, Tennessee and Canoga Park, California, and features guest appearances by Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris.

Universally acclaimed by critics, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was voted as the best album of 1998 in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll, and ranked No. 98 on the 2020 revision of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1999, and earned Williams an additional nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the single "Can't Let Go". The album peaked at No. 68 on the Billboard 200, and remained on the chart for over five months, eventually becoming Williams' first album to be certified Gold by the RIAA. It remains Williams' best-selling album to date, with 872,000 copies sold in the US alone, as of October 2014. Additionally, it was certified Silver in the UK on July 22, 2013.

  1. ^ Pitchfork Staff (September 28, 2022). "The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 26, 2023. Lucinda Williams was two decades into her career at the cross-section of country and rock when she finally released her full-length opus...