If Chris Cagle were nothing more than a man who lives life at full-speed, taking corners on two wheels, he would still be one of country music's more interesting characters. There aren't many in the industry who can put passion and energy on stage or on record the way he can. But a man doesn't go gold with his first two albums and produce seven hits--including four Top Tens--on nothing more than bravado. Chris's secret weapon lies in his ability to rope the whirlwind, to capture its motion and emotion with his pen and his voice. It is, as Wordsworth said, where emotion is recalled in tranquility that poetry is created, and it is there that Chris's untamed spirit becomes art.

The two sides of Cagle's compelling psyche come together beautifully on his third album, Anywhere But Here, a collection that crystallizes the promise of the first two and takes him another big step forward. Its first single, "Miss Me Baby," is four minutes of raw drama sung with a nuanced intensity that announces Chris's growing maturity as a vocalist. It also represents the eighth time he has hit the Top 40 with a song he has written or co-written.