Nine Songs: Shawn Colvin

There's not much in life that feels more pure and honest than an artist performing alone on stage, bearing just their instrument and voice. For singer/songwriter Shawn Colvin, now in her fifth decade as a recording artist, it's a performance style that she's steadfastly stuck with from the very beginning – the golden rule being that any song she might write or be given had to stand up on solo acoustic guitar too, "because that's the basis of what I do, and always has been, to play and sing alone." With a new UK and Ireland tour starting at the end of this month, celebrating the 30th anniversary of her fourth and best known album A Few Small Repairs, Colvin is looking back on the platinum-selling record and its seemingly unlikely rise to the top of adult contemporary radio. "My most vivid memories of making it have to do with how fun and simple it was, which has not always been the case," she tells BEST FIT. “The previous three records, there was always a push to find a single. I don't consider myself a singles artist, so things were kind of forced and compromises were made on my part. But our edict with A Few Small Repairs was, we don't care about radio. We're gonna do our best wor...