While Martina McBride's blend of traditional country and progressive folk styles -- along with her powerful, remarkable voice -- got country audiences to sit up and take notice in 1992, it was The Way That I Am, and most notably its Gretchen Peters-penned single &Independence Day,& that blew minds. While the song itself -- told from the point of view of a surviving daughter of an alcoholic wife-beater and an abused, long-suffering wife and mother -- ends in a tragedy of suicide and death, it is nonetheless a redemptive song that makes no moral judgments yet asks real questions about what &independence& actually means. Set on the Fourth of July, it pointedly asks, Does Independence Day mean independence for everyone or does it mean making the choice to free yourself from your bonds, no matter how horrific the consequences? Is it a choice made independent of society, morals, and cultural and religious mores because of the depth of one's convictions? McBride delivers the story with a tough, matter-of-fact, barely concealed rage, and yet that gives way to a transcendence in the refrain so stirring and shatteringly moving it was used in the aftermath of September 11th (even if it was taken out of context in the same way that Bruce Springsteen's &Born in the USA& was). It was an instant classic and remains one over a decade later. It's the kind of troubling song you cannot immediately -- or perhaps ever -- fathom.