Pam Tillis

Born in Plant City, Florida on July 24, 1957, Pam Tillis is a Grammy-winning country music singer and songwriter best known for her album Put Yourself in My Place (1991) and the Number 1 single “Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)” (1994). Born the daughter of legendary country music vocalist Mel Tillis, she spent much of her childhood growing up in Nashville, Tennessee. When she was eight years old, she began taking piano lessons and also appeared on stage with her father at the Grand Ole Opry. By the age of 12, she had taught herself to play guitar. While attending the University of Tennessee, she performed in a jug band and a folk duo before dropping out and moving to San Francisco, California. Pam Tillis formed a jazz rock band before temporarily singing backing vocals for her father’s touring band. After quitting his group, she worked for his publishing company and began to write songs, including “The Other Side of the Morning,” which was a 1978 single for Barbara Fairchild. She signed with Elektra Records in 1981 and released the disco-influenced single “Every Home Should Have One.” The single was not a success and she left Elektra and moved over to Warner Records. Pam Tillis issued her new wave-influenced debut album, Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey, in 1983. After the album and its two singles failed to chart, she returned to Nashville and embraced her country music roots. She spent the rest of the 1980s writing songs and building an audience through her live appearances. She signed with Arista Nashville and began writing songs for other artists as well as working on her first album for the label, Put Yourself in My Place (1991). The album reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s Country Music Albums chart as well as sliding into Number 69 on the Billboard 200. Her fourth album, Sweetheart’s Dance (1994), contained her only Number 1 single, “My Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)” and earned her a Country Music Association award for Female Vocalist of the Year. Pam Tillis regularly appeared in the Top 10 with hits like “Maybe It Was Memphis” (1991), “Let That Pony Run” (1993), “Spilled Perfume” (1994), “When You Walk in the Room” (1994), “In Between Dances” (1995), “All the Good Ones Are Gone” (1997), and “Land of the Living.” By the end of the 1990s, the country music scene had changed and Pam Tillis’ chart hits dried up. She continued releasing albums sporadically including Thunder & Roses (2001), which reached Number 24 on the country music albums chart, It’s All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis (2002), RhineStoned (2007), and Looking for a Feeling (2020). Pam Tillis also collaborated with fellow country music vocalist Lorrie Morgan on the albums Dos Divas (2013) and Come See Me and Come Lonely (2017). While Pam Tillis didn’t win a Grammy Award for any of her own recordings, she did receive a Grammy for “Same Old Train,” which found the singer collaborating with several other artists.