TRISHA YEARWOOD
By Marggi Roldan
Country Music’s Hottest Female Vocalist Gives Good Advice to Hometown Teens
(reprinted, with permission, from The Beta Journal, 1992)
 
It was May 1992 in a crowded high school gym before an audience of several hundred hometown residents that Trisha Yearwood made an appearance. But she wasn’t there to sing; she was there as a keynote speaker for graduation exercises for the Piedmont Academy class of 1992.
 
It was also the 10th anniversary of her own graduation from the same high school. Returning to her hometown of Monticello, Georgia, as a successful recording artist, Yearwood encouraged the youth she addressed to set goals and to put no limitations on themselves.
 
“It’s never too soon to have a plan,” she said, “Think about what you want to do in life and then be as prepared as possible for the opportunities that come along.”
 
Yearwood’s advice was based on experience. As she said, “There was no textbook to tell me how to do this, but I realized it was a business.” With this in mind, she majored in business at Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia, graduating with honors from this two-year college in 1984. Then she earned a music business degree from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. She got her foot in the recording industry door as in intern in publicity at MTM Records on Music Row.
 
While in college, Yearwood was also singing, as she had done in high school, taking advantage of every opportunity. She sang in church, at weddings, in choruses, trios, musicals, with small bands, and in studios making demos for song writers.
 
When she graduated, she worked the front desk at MTM, answering the telephones. “I met a lot of people and it really lit a fire under me to get out there and do what I really wanted to do—sing,: she remarked.
 
Gradually, Yearwood sang on demos, then background vocals on master sessions. In 1989 a friend hired her to sing a duet with another struggling demo singer—Garth Brooks. “It was instant friendship,” said Yearwood.
 
About to release his first record, Brooks told Yearwood if he was lucky enough to hit success, he wanted to work with her. He made good on his word and called Yearwood (who had by then signed on with MCA Records) to be the opening act for his 1991 arena tour.
 
That tour exposure definitely helped her career as her first single, “She’s in Love With the Boy,” spent two weeks at Billboard’s#1 spot. Three more hit singles followed.
 
About her glamorous life, Yearwood told her high school audience, “You may think this thing I do is limousines all the time and fun and glory. It is all that, but there is a lot of business behind that, and I’m glad that I finished college. I would encourage everyone to complete your education no matter what you plan to do with your life. It’s a valuable thing to have.”
 
How valuable? Writer Kate Meyers, in an article for Entertainment Weekly called Yearwood “Cinderella with a business plan” noting that she was “a manager who’s a Harvard MBA, a personal trainer-nutritionist, a full-time stylist, a Broadway director masterminding her stage show and—drum roll, please—a new fragrance from Revlon called Wild Heart. The 29-year-old singer is the spokesmodel for the country fragrance that she says “reminds me of the honeysuckle flower that grew around my home in Georgia.”
 
Yearwood grew up on a 30-acre farm in a brick ranch-style house surrounded by tall pecan trees. Monticello is a small town in central Georgia about an hour’s drive from Atlanta, Athens and Macon. She is the younger of two daughters of banker Jack Yearwood and his wife, Gwen, a former school teacher who now manages Trisha’s fan club. Mrs. Yearwood taught third grade at Piedmont Academy, a private school with approximately 250 students.
 
Yearwood was a Beta Club member as her mother and sister, Beth, before her and was named Outstanding Senior Girl in the class of 1982. She got all A’s, sang in the school chorus and played softball.
 
While she did sing in church musicals and school talent shows, Yearwood did not begin singing professionally until after she graduated college. She had a firm business education by the time she hit it big.
 
“I’m the head of a corporation, and my name is the bottom line,” said Yearwood in an interview for Newsweek. “Even now, I spend one and a half hours a day singing, and the rest of the time is the business. Yearwood represents a new breed of country singer, said writer John Leland, comfortable in both a marketing meeting and on stage.
 
“I don’t measure my success by the industry’s standards,” said the singer whose first two albums went platinum for a million copies sold. She continued, “I don’t consider myself successful because I’ve sold a million records or that I’ve met famous people.” (She has an all-star lineup of guest artists on her second album including Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Don Henley and Raul Malo.)
 
“Success has a lot to do with what makes you happy,” according to Yearwood, “When I first started singing I didn’t make a dime and the prospects of me ever making a dime were very slim. I think success rate of what I’m doing is about three percent. The bottom line is I did it because I love it. Success is being happy. Keep that in mind no matter what you want to do,” she advised.
 
Yearwood’s career and business keep her busy. Her home is now in Nashville, but she’s on tour and away from home about 50 percent of the time.