Photo courtesy RCA Records Nashville

Martina McBride

Striking country gold is tough enough, but sustaining a career is maybe even more miraculous.

"It's a lot of things," McBride said from her Nashville home. "A lot of it's luck. When you get into this business, I think everybody dreams of having a 10-year career. That's really all you can ask for, so the fact that we're going on 12 or 13 years is amazing. You just have to keep making the music that you believe in and try to make the best music you can make."

Finding the right song is a big part of McBride's success.

"Oh, definitely," she said. "It's just about finding the right fit and kind of a gut instinct. It's like you can look at a rack of 300 dresses and they're all beautiful but there's gonna be one that's just right."

McBride definitely does a great job of picking songs.

"I am the producer. I choose all my songs," she said. "The days of somebody telling you what to sing, I hope, went by the wayside 20 years ago."

McBride wanted to cut "Independence Day," for instance, the instant she heard it. The song's vivid lyrics tell of a woman finding the strength to leave an abusive relationship.

"It was really well written and I had never heard a song about that subject before," she said. "I thought it was a song that needed to be heard. My reaction was, 'That's an awesome song and I want to sing that forever and ever and ever. I don't want anybody else to sing it, I want to sing it, it's my song!' "

McBride made "Independence Day" her own and, in the 10 years since its release, it's become her signature song. Recently, it was even voted No. 8 among CMT's "100 Greatest Songs of Country Music."

The singer's love for "Independence Day" hasn't waned over the years.

ALAN JACKSON/MARTINA MCBRIDE 7:30 p.m., March 27 Pete Maravich Assembly Center

"Every time I sing it is like the very first time I sang it," she said. "It's just as powerful for me and just as emotional and strong. So that's the mark of a great song."

While other singers grow tired of their hits and even refuse to perform them, McBride can't imagine not singing her songs.

"That's why I take so much time making sure that the songs I choose are ones I want to sing forever. I still love all the songs and all the hits, just as much as the day I recorded them. I'm lucky, I guess."

Besides picking her material and producing her recordings, McBride and her husband have their own recording studio. It was there that she recorded her latest album, Martina.

"The studio is my husband's lifelong dream. He just ran with it and before I knew it we had a studio. He doesn't do anything halfway. It's awesome, probably the finest studio in North America. There's everything from the finest vintage microphone to the most recent technology."

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Music runs in McBride's family, from her parents to her daughters. She got much childhood experience singing with her father's weekend band back in Kansas. He played guitar and sang while her mom ran the sound board.

Understandably, McBride's parents are thrilled about their daughter's country-music stardom.

"They're so proud," McBride said. "I had my dad sing on the Grand Ole Opry and I'm able to share all this with them. They always believed that this could happen for me, that if I got in the right place at the right time and worked really hard it could happen for me just as easy as it could happen for anybody else. That really gave me that belief as well. So I don't think they're shocked, but just happy and proud. The thing they're proudest of is that this career hasn't turned my life upside down. It enhanced rather than ruined my life, as celebrity and fame can do."

Like her parents, McBride said she'll encourage her musically inclined children to go into the business, too, if that's what they want.

"It's a gratifying, really special thing to be able to do. Plus, having grown up around it, I think my kids will have a real sense of what it's all about and how to handle it."