Melissa Etheridge On Her New "Awakening"

Rock star Melissa Etheridge has been an icon of the LGBT entertainment world for most of her 20-year career, coming out publicly at a party called The Triangle Ball, a gay and lesbian celebration of Bill Clinton's first inauguration; later that same year, she titled her fourth album Yes I Am in acknowledgement of her publicly embraced lesbian identity.

Since then she's been a supporter of the Human Rights Campaign and a favorite of young LGBT fans everywhere; like any other celebrity, she's also led a public life, which has included the end of one long-term relationship, the beginning of another, children, a battle with breast cancer, and an autobiography.

But Etheridge's contribution has not consisted solely of headlines for the gossiprazzi. Even as she made a recovery from cancer, she was performing, writing, and recording music, adding an Oscar to her two Grammies for the song "I Need to Wake Up," which was included in the Al Gore environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

That song, whether by chance or design, thematically prefigured Etheridge's latest studio album, her ninth, which serves as another form of autobiographical document. The first album since her 2004 diagnosis with breast cancer, The Awakening is a look back at her life as a public persona and a private person. The sixteen songs on the album retrace a spiritual and professional path that starts with an existential declaration that, "All there is, is atoms and space / Everything else is illusion," and wends through ambition, heartbreak, fear, fulfillment, and an open-armed welcome for whatever tomorrow might bring. Etheridge says that she's had a "spiritual awakening," but she's also reached a new artistic threshold: reviews praise the album as a deeper, more mature work than previous albums.

Melissa Etheridge chatted with EDGE recently by phone. Gracious, good-natured, and down to earth, she made the call herself; when EDGE answered, it was not to hear the voice of a publicist or an assistant, but the singer's own voice, which in conversation carries a warm, authentic quality. With so much of Etheridge's life contained, and examined afresh, in the new album, it seemed only proper to proceed with the interview from the basis of her own words and music.

EDGE: Melissa Etheridge.com bills The Awakening as "the album of [your] life." There do seem to be a lot of autobiographical elements present, especially in songs like "Message to Myself," "An Unexpected Rain," "Map of the Stars," and "The Universe Listened."

Melissa Etheridge: Most of my work has been autobiographical. The thing is, the more that has gone on in my career, the more people have learned about my personal life. So the autobiographical parts of [the album] are clearer to the listeners, because they know so much about my personal life now, the story and the struggle and all of it.

As I sat down to write this, I knew I wanted to write from my awakening, my newfound spirituality, most post-cancer spring and minefield. These things may be personal; I hope that they're also universal. I've found that if I write something absolutely truthfully from my heart, that it tends to ring universally.

EDGE: In one song, you sing about a deal: "I'll pay the price, any price / Just give me the fame." Knowing that everyone who listens to your music knows about your personal life, do you feel this is the price you've paid? Has fame been worth that price?

Melissa Etheridge: It's amazing what we are willing to do for what we believe will make us happy. I grew up in the Midwest believing that the mountaintop is Rich and Famous. It's success, it's fame. Look at all those happy people: it's on my television, it's on my radio, it's pumped into me every day--I'll be happy if I can be rich and famous.

So I went out to California, totally believing it, and didn't put my energies into my own self, my relationships; I careened on into it recklessly, like, "Yee-hah! Here I come!" I made some choices and put a lot out there. Was the price worth it? Yeah, because I'm not going to regret anything. That is the path I chose. But I definitely was, like, "I'll pay the price!" Getting famous was the goal.

EDGE: In the song "Message to Myself," you talk about hearing yourself on the radio and knowing you are loved. Is that important to you, to feel beloved by your fans?

Melissa Etheridge: What that song is about is, when I was in chemotherapy, my wife actually asked me if I'd ever listened to my own albums one after the other. I had all the time in the world, I was just laying in bed, so we started with my first album, my first song, and I stopped it after the first song and talked about what I was writing about, what I was thinking. And after a while, I realized that, "I wrote that, and I really didn't know what was going to happen until afterwards." I saw that I was kind of forecasting. I got to the song "Come To My Window" (the Grammy-winning track from 1993's album Yes I Am), and I heard "Nothing fills the blackness that has seeped into my chest," and I was, "Holy cow, I'm talking about cancer!"

Now when I look back, [those songs] are speaking to me. They are my subconscious saying, "Good Lord, get out of this relationship!" They're telling me things. When I hear them on the radio, I think, "I was so sad, I was so selling myself short! Why didn't I love myself enough?" When I went to write this album, I said, "Now, wait a minute. I want to send a message to myself, to my future self, so when I hear it on the radio I'll know that I'm okay." I wrote that down, and it became a song.

EDGE: You have been something of an icon since the 1980s for lesbian listeners; do you see yourself as a lesbian singer, or more as a singer who happens to love women?

Melissa Etheridge: Oh... hmm. Well, I'm a lesbian; and I'm a singer. I'm a singer from my heart; I feel like I have a message for the world, and I feel like I am an artist, so it's my job to be the town crier, the minstrel going through the town and telling us all how we're doing. And I have to be a lesbian, but that also is part of me, and it dictates [elements of my life], so I also am a lesbian singer. So I don't know if I am more one or the other.

EDGE: Rolling Stone Magazine's review of The Awakening says that the new album shows, quote, "a depth and an ease" that the reviewer feels is new for you.

Melissa Etheridge: They finally liked one of my albums!

EDGE: I wonder, do you tend to agree with that review's suggestion that your work is more mature on The Awakening than in the past?

Melissa Etheridge: You know what, I finally just let go of the fear. My first four albums, I was trying to figure out what people want to hear, and then I got a couple of number one hits, and, there you go! But then things changed, and the radio got narrower and narrower, and all of a sudden I was competing against Britney's belly shirts, and I was, like, "That's not me." But I was trying very hard to fit on the radio; trying to make music that would be song you'd want to listen to. It certainly didn't contaminate all of my work, but it's there on my other albums.

This is finally where I said, "Forget it." I called my record company and said, "You know what? I love you, but you've got to leave me alone. I'll hand in my record when I'm done." And they said, "Okay."

EDGE: How was your working relationship with your co-producer, David Cole?

Melissa Etheridge: Ah, he's like my older brother. He's so calm, he's so loving. He knows that all I need is a safe place to make the music. He's a producer / engineer, so he sets up the microphone, he knows that it's about getting the track live, about getting the performance. He makes sure that everything's taken care of so we [can] just come in and perform. And he's not afraid to tell me, "You can do better. Make this line better." He challenges me, which I love; I think it's important to find the people who are willing to step up and say, "I think you can do better."

EDGE: Is this sense of greater artistic maturity and confidence the result of time and experience as a musician? Is it the result of having faced cancer? Is it a combination of all those things?

Melissa Etheridge: Yeah, it's all of it. I think we do get wiser as we get older, and I see the trends now, the things that come and go. I see the artists that shoot up the charts, and then shoot right back down. I've seen them shake their heads, and I realize, "I'm in this for the long run: I'm in this for the art. I need to make my art." I think that's what my listeners want, too.

EDGE: Sure: your fans buy a Melissa Etheridge album, they probably want to hear a little Melissa Etheridge.

Melissa Etheridge: I think so, yeah! I think they want to hear some lyrics, they want to hear some rock 'n' roll, they want to hear some spirit. I think they do; it's my job to provide that.

EDGE: All of those elements are there in The Awakening. There's a definite country influence, but there's gospel and pop music in the mix, too.

Melissa Etheridge: I really went back to my roots. I said, "What was the music that excited me, the music I couldn't wait to grow up and perform, like The Who, and John Lennon, and Marvin Gaye, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, all these things that you listen to and go, 'Whooo!'--the music that excited you." That's what I wanted to have: a sort of unbridled music.

Rock and roll should be crazy. Like when I wrote "Threesome:" I said, "You know what? I'm gonna be dangerous in my monogamy!"

EDGE: It's not very sexy, but it's a wonderful ode to monogamy.

Melissa Etheridge: Isn't that crazy?

EDGE: And it is sexy. Saving yourself for just one person? When you get that, it's a turn on, actually.

Melissa Etheridge: That's what I tried [to get across]. And I'm also trying to say, Hey! Just because you're married and you've got kids, it doesn't mean that you to give that up. No way. that's a big lie. None of that "lesbian bed death," huh-uh, no sir... ma'am.

EDGE: This is your ninth studio album. As time goes on, have you noticed whether your fan base from the beginning of your career are still your fans now? Are you appealing to younger fans? Is it a mixture of both?

Melissa Etheridge: You know, I've got fans that have been with me from the very first album and they're still there. They are deep; they ain't never going away. They listen to every little thing I do, and that's awesome. They keep me honest.

And there are people that come and go. And there are young people that are constantly coming in. A lot of them come from different places. Some of them come from a gay place, some of them just, "I was watching the Oscars, and I never heard of that artist." Some come from the cancer side. It's constantly evolving and growing.

EDGE: The last track on The Awakening is, "What Happens Tomorrow." Let me ask you that as a question: what happens tomorrow? Are you making plans for new projects already, or is it all about touring and talking to journalists right now?

Melissa Etheridge: I have plans for outing in 2008, and I am talking to journalists like you right now, because the album is coming out.

I'm on my own spiritual path, and I'm ready to take care of what happens tomorrow spiritually. As our reality [unfolds] and as our world revolves, there's a lot of new and different things we have to do as artists. I'm constantly creating.