Mindy McCready, Whose Life Was A Country Song, Has Died

A hot-rod blonde with a high-drama life, Mindy McCready, like Tammy Wynette, hit fans and the music industry hard in the mid-1990s with that wide-open sob in her voice. As she plied country music's classic long-suffering female trope defined by Wynette's "Stand By Your Man" and " 'Til I Can Make It On My Own," McCready also made girl power manifestos. The 37-year-old singer allegedly took her own life on Sunday, at her home in Arkansas.

Her first single, "Ten Thousand Angels," and another from her 1996 debut album, "Maybe He'll Notice Her Now," told of the struggle to avoid bad love and take care of oneself in romance. But the songs in which she asserted equal rights when it comes to kicking up stilettos — including her No. 1 hit "Guys Do It All The Time" and "A Girl's Gotta Do (What A Girl's Gotta Do)," from her second album — were the ones that struck a nerve.