Listening to Beth Nielsen Chapman is like listening to any Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kate Campbell or Sarah McLachlan record; it's your older, more sensible sister talking. When she wants to let her hair down it doesn't feel right somehow, as if she's going partying for the first time after years of humdrum married life and turns up feeling awkward and overdressed. But the joy of being a respected and versatile songwriter like Chapman is that she can offer her music to the cream of Nashville's female talent and keep the ones more suited to her deep, mature voice for herself. In this way, the infectious Latin beats of the girlish Free would work well in the

mouth of a young, pop artist such as Jessica Andrews, in the same way that a fresh-faced Faith Hill turned This Kiss into a worldwide hit.