My Life

1	You Don't Know My Love 3:36
2	It's All Coming Back to Me Now 3:30
3	My Life 4:21
4	If It's Gonna Rain 3:56
5	Time Keeps Slipping Away 3:16
6	Why Can't I 3:49
7	A Day in the Life of America 3:59
8	Somewhere Dry 3:40
9	Local Girls 3:42
10	Every Fire 3:34
11	Accept My Love 4:03

Barnes & Noble

Back on the label where he writ his legend large in country history, Ronnie Milsap hasn't lost a stride. Teamed with Alan Jackson's great producer, Keith Stegall, Milsap puts his own stamp on 11 tunes in various styles. Equally at home with R&B, mainstream country, and rock 'n' roll (his studio credits include work with Elvis Presley), the Man Behind the Grand shows off a rich baritone voice every bit as strong as it was in his hit-making heyday, and with it a soul as deep and expressive as any singer's out there. The heartrending breakup ballad "If It's Gonna Rain," gives Milsap a chance to explore the high and low ranges of his voice for dramatic effect. The title song, "My Life," is an atmospheric treatise, slow and deliberate, in which Milsap roars into a triumphant, self-affirming chorus that's the country equivalent of "My Way." A staccato litany of the daily grind ("We punch in, then lunch it, then punch out again / Rush home to clean up the messes we left"), "A Day in the Life of America" belongs in a time capsule as a document of how we lived at a particular moment. Add in some grinding southern funk by way of "You Don't Know My Love" and a taste of contemporary honky-tonk in the stomping, soaring "Accept My Love," and it's clear Ronnie Milsap, gifted vocal stylist and stylish piano pounder, is at the top of his game. David McGee

All Music Guide

Prior to 2006's My Life, Ronnie Milsap had not made an album of new material for a major label in years. The last was True Believer, recorded for Liberty in 1993, which followed Back to the Grindstone, his parting of ways with RCA Records, by two years. Over that decade-and-a-half, Milsap wasn't exactly inactive -- he continued to play shows and record, including re-recording his biggest songs for Capitol in 1996, and a collection of standards in 2004, but My Life qualifies as a genuine comeback, as it finds Milsap returning to RCA and recording songs that are not only new, but addresses American life in the early 2000s. This, of course, is most explicit on "A Day in the Life of America," a chronicling of mundane everyday events that borders on the depressing, but My Life finds Milsap reminiscing about his life in a manner appropriate only for a singer in his sixties. This provides My Life with slightly nostalgic undertones at times, but the album never feels melancholy: it's as bright and tuneful and relaxed as the best of his early-'80s crossover albums. In fact, if it wasn't for Keith Stegall's crisp, thoroughly modern production, it would be easy to mistake My Life as an unearthed lost album from Milsap's early-'80s peak, and that's what makes it such a good comeback: song for song, this stays true to Milsap's strengths as a country-pop hitmaker, yet recasts it in a manner that's fresh without pandering to the charts. If he doesn't make another record, My Life will stand as a worthy coda to his career, but hopefully, this excellent album will be the start of a third act in a career that's been quite remarkable. Stephen Thomas Erlewine