Changes drive Shawn Colvin's 'Whole New You'

As Shawn Colvin wrote and recorded her new album "Whole New You," which hit stores on Tuesday (3/27), the Grammy-winning artist found herself thinking about life as a newly married woman and as the mother of a newborn.

"The nature of those kind of sentiments were on my mind a lot--and not only were they on my mind, they were taking effect in my life," Colvin said. "That was a lot of food for thought. Simple time management was certainly different, as far as when I could write and how I had to find time to write and record."

For her first album of original material since 1996, Colvin teamed with longtime collaborator John Leventhal on 11 songs. The pair worked separately until it came time to record, with Leventhal handling much of the music and Colvin penning the lyrics.

"We don't sit in a room and work until the song is finished," Colvin said. "Sometimes we do it through the mail. He'll mail me some music and I'll work on some words by myself, and then we'll get together and make a demo of it. Sometimes, like with [the song] 'Whole New You,' I went to his house. He had the music written already, he set up a microphone and I just started singing stuff. Some of it is what you hear and some of it had to be changed a little bit. I just kind of made it up as I went along."

While songs like "Matter of Minutes" and "Nothing Like You" drift along with a dreamlike quality, "Another Plane Went Down" actually was based on Colvin's dreams. "Everything in that song is real," she said. "They're all dreams I've had. I really was watching a TV show about a plane crash. I really had a friend whose girlfriend died in a crash. I was moved by coverage of a particular accident I saw. It all came out of that, and it was very dream influenced for some reason."