Ron Sexsmith admits he's a singer/songwriter. But while that term conjures up visions of oh-so-sensitive, introspective, wimpy guitar strummers, Sexsmith is out to prove that it's not just about getting up onstage, baring your soul and expecting the audience to stand rapt at your naked confessions.

"John Lennon was a singer/songwriter," says Canadian Sexsmith, who will release his fourth solo album, Blue Boy, on Tuesday. "But because he was in the Beatles, he didn't get saddled with that. I'm a pop artist, too."

So even though Blue Boy was produced by Steve Earle, the album has more in common with Revolver's pop experimentation or The White Album's sonic diversity than it does with the twangier, folkier influences one might expect. In fact, fans accustomed to the gentle ballads that colored Sexsmith's three previous albums are in for a surprise from the very start, as the album opens with a blast of horns and swinging R&B on "This Song."

"We always eased into it before, because we wanted to set up the record in a nice way lyrically," Sexsmith said of earlier work that found the likes of Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney singing his praises. "This time we figured that starting off in a loud, obnoxious way would either alienate people who liked me before or serve as kind of a call to arms that this is going to be a more chaotic album."

Sexsmith said Earle encouraged him to record the kinds of tunes that usually got left off of his other albums. "He was determined to make it rock a little harder," Sexsmith said. "The stuff he was most excited about was the stuff that I never record."

Earle pushed Sexsmith to try a reggae beat in "Never Been Done," a song about an overbearing father, and a country-blues shuffle on "Parable," about a "born loser" who's thinking about killing someone. There's no shortage of ballads, such as "Fool Proof," which features a gorgeous Chet Baker-style trumpet solo, but stylistically the album is all over the map.

Regardless of what the tunes sound like, Blue Boy's lyrics still exhibit Sexsmith's keen eye for a telling detail and his empathy for people in no-win situations.

Though he said that personal songs are easier to write, it's the fictional songs that he's most proud of. He came up with the title and tune of "Cheap Hotel" easily, for instance, but wanted to avoid writing another clichéd road song about musicians staying in bad rooms. "I wrote the last verse first and worked backward," he said, coming up with a tune about a woman who takes her kids and flees from an abusive husband.

"I always wanted to be able to write short stories or novels," Sexsmith said. "I don't know if I have the discipline."

Sexsmith knows that while he's established a cult following and found critical acclaim, his songs aren't likely to ever become hits because he rarely goes for the big chorus or the pop hook.

"Where my heart is at is a more subtle approach," he said. "I gravitate more toward songs like Bob Dylan's, which weren't huge hits and didn't have big choruses, but they resonate."

Sexsmith just kicked off a North American tour, and he said it's onstage that he really gets to know his songs. "Sometimes it takes you by surprise, when you're doing a song you've done hundreds of times before," he said. "A line will just sneak up on you and shocks you or maybe even chokes you up."

Ron Sexsmith tour dates, according to his publicist: