Melissa Etheridge: Looks Back On Her Legendary Music Career
"It did my heart good to go back and listen and go, 'Oh, I wasn't as bad as I thought.'"
If you’re like me and a fan of Melissa Etheridge's earliest hits — "Bring Me Some Water", "Like The Way I Do" — you’re in for a treat with her latest album, One Way Out, a new collection of previously unreleased tracks written by the singer in the late '80s and early '90s.
Back then, some of the feminist and more queer themes in the songs were "a little overly powerful," she told me, laughing. "Now I look at these songs and go, 'Oh, I mean, they're innocent now.'"
While Etheridge's lyrics have always included nods to her sexuality, she's purposely stayed clear of too many gendered references in her lyrics. She wanted her music to be universal, relatable to people of all genders. This is as true now as it was in the '80s when she was an unsigned artist playing her guitar and singing in an array of gay bars across Southern California.
I got to speak to Melissa for LGBTQ&A this week to celebrate the release of her new album, One Way Out. She talks about how not being publicly out affected her songwriting, never hiding her sexuality from those in the music industry, and what it was like to go back and listen to her 30-year-old demos. "It did my heart good to go back and listen and go, 'Oh, I wasn't as bad as I thought.'"
You can click here to listen, or read a few excerpts below including my favorite part where she talks about k.d. lang sleeping with her girlfriend. Whoops.
JM: When you were first starting out, during your first couple of records you were not out publicly, how did that affect your art? Were you afraid to write overtly gay lyrics?
ME: I was very aware of my lyrics, but the funny thing was even when I was playing gay bars, I didn't write overtly. I never went, "And I love her." I never wrote like that because I did want my music to be universal. If a woman is thinking about a guy, I want her to be able to sing, "Oh, somebody bring me some water." I kept it very gender nonspecific for that reason.
JM: Is there an example of a lyric that you changed in a song to make it less specific?
ME: No, I didn't change any, but when I went to write about things, I remember thinking, "OK, well, I can always write about the other woman," the "Go on and close your eyes, imagine me there. She's got similar features," because I'm a woman so I can sing about that. I know I would write things and the way that I would write, I would either write about, "Oh, you're cheating on me with another woman," or "You're with somebody else," or it's me and you. I'm singing directly to you.
I never did a "here" or a "him" about the relationship I was singing about. So I specifically would choose that way to write about it, so I didn't have to write about the gender of the person that's breaking my heart.
JM: When you came out publicly in 1993, with so few out public figures, did you feel lonely in that?
ME: It was scary in that there weren't a whole lot of people. k.d. lang came out a few weeks before I did, and we were all very good friends back then, Ellen [DeGeneres], Rosie [O'Donnell], k.d., we were in this sort of this gay underground Hollywood, and we were all very much out in Hollywood.
JM: Among this community of women, did any of you ever date?
ME: No, it's so funny. None of us, Rosie, Ellen, k.d., me...I'm trying to think. No, none of us ever dated each other. k.d. slept with my girlfriend, which... anyway. But no, I think we were all very sort of powerful... Do I say tops? I don't know. And so, we weren't really attracted to each other. We were friends.
JM: When you were starting out, you seemed to be presenting very femme. Was that the industry pushing you in that direction or was that how you felt comfortable presenting?
ME: The industry really didn't tell me much. I was very blessed to have the record company I had, Island Records. It was Chris Blackwell who owned Island Records and he discovered me in a women's bar. The whole industry knew I was gay because they had all come to the women's bars to see me and didn't sign me, and he did. He liked what he saw. He liked the strong, soft butch kind of woman that I was.
Me, I got out there and went, "Oh gosh, what's the world going to say?" I think the only time that they ever went, "Oh, we want you to do a little bit more makeup on you," was the third album I did. I did two photoshoots for Never Enough. One was kind of sporty, soft butch and then they brought in another makeup person and that's when they cut my bangs. And you'll see on the back of the album, there's this really gorgeous picture of me. That was about as glam...I let them do that here or there and then by the time Yes I Am came out, which was the next record, that photoshoot I went, "No, no, no, I'm being myself," and from then on, everything you've seen has always been how I feel and who I am.
JM: All of the songs on the new album were ones you recorded previously, but never released. Were they songs you didn’t like originally? Did they not fit on the albums? How were you thinking about them?
ME: Well, when I went back, a few years ago, I investigated all these old demos I had and I started listening and I was like, "Wait a minute. These are really good songs," and then I said, "I need to go record these."
I started realizing that some of them, I didn't put on albums because one, some of them, I wasn't out yet and they were a little...there's a song on the album called "Wild Wild Wild" and it's very...I am singing to a feminine...it's just obvious. The other person's very feminine. I remember I loved the song and I was like, "I can't," and I stopped myself from doing it.
Then songs like "As Cool as You Try" and "Save Myself" are really, I mean, they're very feminist based, very powerful based that that fit perfectly now. We're there now, but 25 years ago, 30 years ago, they were a little overly powerful. If you were around or an adult back in the late '80s, early '90s, you kind of remember there was a big feminist backlash, so it was different. And so, now I look at these songs and go, "Oh, I mean, they're innocent now."
You can listen to the full interview with Melissa Etheridge on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer.
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Lots of love.
Jeffrey
@jeffmasters1
@lgbtqpod