Multi-talented actress, producer and writer Rita Wilson announced on February 09,2012 that she will make her solo album debut with the release of AM/FM, on Decca Records May 8, 2012. The album contains 14 tracks, carefully curated by Wilson along with her producer Fred Mollin.  Wilson is best known for her acting roles in more than 28 films and numerous television programs.

Rita was the driving force behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding and produced the film musical Mamma Mia! She also starred as Roxie Hart on Broadway in the musical Chicago.   A lifelong passion for music brought her many talents full circle to deliver an album release that is an extremely personal endeavor.  She chose songs for the album that resonated emotionally with her, that told a story and evoked the era of the 60s and 70s which sparked her singing desires.

“That time period was hugely influential on me as a kid and as a teenager,” she says. “I’d spend hours and hours lying on my bed, holding up the albums, reading the liner notes, and learning all the words to these songs that expressed what I was feeling or fantasizing about.”

AM/FM is an intimate, elegant and beautifully sung collection of classics from the ’60s and ’70s that together, make up the soundtrack to her life. “The song sequence on the album tells a story of a very innocent, idealized version of love in the ‘AM’ section, before it shifts to the ‘FM’ section and becomes more about the disillusionment that happens after you’ve had some heartbreaks” Wilson says.

The album is essentially divided into two sections. The first half, “AM,” features songs from the ’60s that Wilson remembers singing along to on AM radio while riding in the back seat of her parents’ car and that recall the “lovely innocence and hopefulness of the time”: “All I Have To Do Is Dream,” “Never My Love,” “Cherish,” “Come See About Me,” “Angel Of The Morning,” “Walking In The Rain,” “Wichita Lineman” (written by Jimmy Webb who also plays piano on Wilson’s version), and “You Were On My Mind.”

By the time Wilson got her own car (a Datsun 2000 Roadster) at age 17, popular music lived on FM radio. She became enamored with the folk-rock singer-songwriters who dominated those airwaves in the early ’70s and her favorite songs make up the “FM” half: “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues,” “Love Has No Pride,” “Please Come To Boston,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Faithless Love,” and “River”.

“As I got older, I began to understand that not everything had a happy ending,” Wilson says, “so I was drawn to songs by women who wrote about how love was not always the dream fantasy; that there was pain and disappointment involved.”

AM/FM was recorded last spring at the legendary Capitol Records Studio A in Hollywood.  Augmenting Wilson’s exquisite vocal performances are appearances by special guests Chris Cornell, Sheryl Crow,Jimmy Webb, Jackson Browne, Faith Hill, Vince Gill, and Patty Scialfa (who also produced “Come See About Me”).

Featureflash / Shutterstock.com

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