Lisa Morales Beautiful Mistake Zaino Make no mistake, Lisa Morales’ Beautiful Mistake is the masterwork of a songwriter taking life’s trag- edies — its disappointments and those desperate midnight-hour stares into the soul — and turning them into personally cathartic, yet universally reverberating, songs. This is much more real than a peek into the journal of a forlorn, heartbroken twentysomething. Morales gives us the hard-earned honest emotions that only a far wiser women with new perspectives on life and love would be willing to wear so proudly on her sleeve. Morales wrote the material on Beautiful Mistake in the wake of both her mother’s death and the dissolution of her marriage. “Fool That I Am” finds Morales taking stock of both events (“Here it is more than a year and I’m finally waking up“). On “They’re Gone,” she mourns the departure of both mother and husband as well as the futile realization of fate (“I can’t stop this all from happening — goodbye”). But it’s not simply “woe is me” from Morales. “Wanna Be in Love” may well be the sexiest song this side of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” Produced by Michael “Cornbread” Traylor with contributions from the likes of Walt Wilkins, Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Dustin Welch and Matt Giles, Beautiful Mistake emanates unblemished truth from beginning to end. GLeaSON BOOTH Texas Music Magazine