LeAnn Rimes - Crazy - Patsy Cline Tribute at ACA's in 2013
To me both LeAnn and Trisha versions are equal good.
Shortly after Diane Warren wrote the song, she ran into LeAnn Rimes at a restaurant. This was right after Rimes had just won the 1997 Grammy for Best New Artist, and was one of the hottest names in popular music. Warren told LeAnn Rimes she wrote “How Do I Live” with her in mind, and how it was going to be featured on a huge movie soundtrack. Whether this was embellishment to get LeAnn Rimes to bite and record the song or was the truth all along, it worked, and the 14-year-old Rimes was in the studio the very next day recording her version of “How Do I Live.”
However, when the LeAnn Rimes recording was presented to Touchstone Pictures, they thought the subject matter of the song wasn’t believable coming from a 14-year-old. They also felt the song sounded too pop for their liking. And so the decision was made to forgo the LeAnn Rimes version of “How Do I Live.”
Meanwhile, looking for a more country version of the song, Touchstone Pictures turned to another hot name in country music at the time: Trisha Yearwood. Completely unaware that LeAnn Rimes had recorded the song previously, Yearwood agreed to give it a crack herself. Though the Yearwood recording is sold as the “country” version of the song, the production and instrumentation was quite contemporary as well.