How does Williams' heavy Southern drawl land for you, essential to the songs or something you had to warm up to?

Admittedly, I was skeptical of the drawl initially - think Mick Jagger on a number of Stones' songs - but then decided this must be her natural way and felt it did lend itself to the content

I really focused on American pop, folk, protest, and enslaved people’s/working songs when I was in music school and I learned in a musicology class that people have studied the pop “country music” accent and can’t actually trace it to any one location. It’s a made up accent exclusively for singing. I thought it worked SO well for this album since she dabbles in styles with roots all across the American South, so it fit a sort of “pan southern” sound palette. There was a real feeling of, “hang on, where are we again?” That I felt throughout the album but in a way I really like.