Lucinda Williams spent six years recording her masterpiece ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,’ driving multiple producers and engineers to the brink of madness with her obsessive pursuit of a sound only she could hear. The album was a critical triumph that defined Americana—but the process nearly destroyed every professional relationship she had.

Williams is the rare artist whose perfectionism is both her superpower and her curse. She hears imperfections that nobody else can detect and refuses to release anything until it meets a standard that exists only in her mind. The result is a catalog of extraordinary albums separated by agonizing gaps of silence.

• The six-year recording saga that turned ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’ into legend
• Why Williams’ obsessive perfectionism both elevated and paralyzed her career
• The producers and collaborators who were chewed up by her uncompromising vision
• How the album that nearly broke her became the blueprint for Americana music