Melissa Etheridge opens up about her psychic songwriting, her transformative tour and the importance of recording queer history…
By Elio Iannacci
With two Grammys to her name, a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame and an honorary degree from Berklee College, Melissa Etheridge can be counted as one of the most venerated queer people in music history. To survey the 63-year-old singer-songwriter’s 27-plus-year career is to understand why the reverence for her is so well-deserved.
Even before people were expected to write genderless pop and rock – in order to reach a spectrum of straight and 2SLGBTQI+ fans – Etheridge was doing it deliberately. Her discography, containing chart-topping tracks such as “I’m The Only One,” “Come To My Window” and “Bring Me Some Water” embodies the kind of thirsty, hungry-for-love (and autonomy) time that many ’90s queers lived through. The raw lust and yearning that Etheridge injected into her songs was unachievable by many rockers in the ’90s and 2000s who just weren’t able to grasp the depths of desire she presented with her raspy voice and sensual lyrics.
Then there is the rather important fact that Etheridge – who was inspired by k.d. lang’s public coming out one year prior – became one of the only proud and out lesbian voices in the music scene. This was after Etheridge came out in 1993 at the Triangle Ball, an LGBTQ-focused celebration of US President Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
Her upcoming tour – with a Canadian stop in Niagara Falls on April 23 at Fallsview Casino Resort – has the trailblazer revisiting many of these iconic moments in music with stories and music. At the cusp of celebrating the 30-year-old birthday of her classic album, Your Little Secret – a monumental disc for queer people, who viewed it as a beacon during the peak of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell era of American politics – Etheridge has found herself in full-on recalibration mode.
Etheridge, one of rock’s most influential queer trailblazers, has sat down with IN Magazine a number of times throughout the years, including her July/August 2017 cover story and her March 2011 cover story. Weeks before she was set to fling herself into the throes of self-examination on stage, Etheridge talked to IN about the breadth, complexity and clairvoyant nature of her body of work.
I’d like you to think back to about 30 years ago…when you were preparing to release the album Your Little Secret. What are the first memories that immediately come to mind?
The album before that – [1992’s] Yes I Am – was so big for me. So I started doing the biggest tours of my life and reaching a dream come true. People knew the songs. It was right before everything changed in my life. I had a relationship change and I started realizing that what I thought would make my life perfect – fame and fortune – was not cutting it. I found out that all that doesn’t solve your problems. I took a journey inward rather than outward. The music mirrors that.
You come across as the voice of reason in a recent music documentary called Louder: The Soundtrack of Change. So many songs are highlighted for instigating change. Which female artist is politically on-the-job right now?
I want to say Taylor Swift, even though she’s not directly political. She represents what it’s like to be a successful woman on her own terms and being hugely influential to the majority. That is power. To be political now is to follow your own path…which she clearly does.
Taylor was inspired by seeing you live as a kid. As TikTok knows, it motivated her to pick up a guitar. If you could do a duet with her with one of your songs, which would it be?
Something very gentle: something like ‘Sleep While I Drive.’ It’s very her.
In 1995, you covered Joan Armatrading’s ‘The Weakness In Me.’ She is a queer rocker that everyone knew was lesbian, even though she only came out officially, publicly, in 2011. Did that feel like a full-circle moment for you?
Oh, yes. I love bringing her to people in any way since some may not know her work. She’s such an interesting singer-songwriter with a powerful voice, so I often would sing that song before I ever recorded an album. I would play it in the bars.
The video to your [2021 single] ‘Cool As You Try’ is an homage to lesbian bars everywhere. Do you think this current generation of queers is lacking these kinds of spaces?
They create their own space, and I think the healthy thing is that they don’t need to be surrounded by alcohol to do it. The unhealthy part of those meeting spaces didn’t make those spaces as safe as we’d like to think when it came to gathering. The new generation has changed all that.
The late ’90s was a world of gigantic super clubs for gay men, where DJs like Junior Vasquez had booths designed by Dolce & Gabbana and played to crowds of hundreds. Did you ever sample any of that?
Yes. I went to The Limelight in New York and, ohhh boy. I loved it because it was in an old church and they reclaimed that space and made it a bar. To be honest, New York always scared me in the ’90s when I was a celebrity in a way that was tough to understand. I tried to stay away from big places like that.
What did you think about the way LGBTQ+ media wrote about you when you first came out? Did you find them to be fair?
The Advocate’s editor was Judy Wieder [the first female editor of the magazine]. She was very beautiful and she did stories on me that were smart and sensitive, so I appreciated that. There was a huge divide back then…between lesbian magazines and gay magazines. The two really emblemized the ’90s. The struggle back then was trying to bring the lesbian community and the gay male community together…even though we sometimes would have nothing in common other than both sides were seen as gay. The styles of storytelling from each section of LGBTQ media were different. We were each trying to hold on to our own, and I could feel that struggle. Judy was an actual literal advocate of mine, and I think that they definitely got my story right when they told it. I was honoured to be recognized in a way that wasn’t so limiting.
The more time passes, the more I see how important queer media is for us and for the world at large. Do you see that too?
Yes. We tend to innovate so much and change so many traditional systems because we have to. I saw the creation of many things like lesbian magazines such as Curve and Diva. A lot of the lesbian journalism that came out back then was exciting. They were doing such incredible work to bring AIDS awareness into the light and to bring our political power into focus. I’m so grateful to all of those editors and writers.
I was working for some really intense gay lifestyle magazines, and we did a lot of things wrong. Did you live through a lot of those growing pains?
All I can say is we all did our best. We only knew so much. We were just starting to be heard. Now we can do better.
Your film and live album, I’m Not Broken, which was filmed and recorded at the Topeka Correctional Facility, was such an eye-opening project. After doing it, did you have a renewed sense of hope for the incarcerated women you performed for?
Yes, I did. I really did. It did so much for me to believe in the power of human change and human growth. I was so inspired by many of them and I’ve visited them again since. How we hold incarcerated people in general, and our collective ideas of crime and punishment, needs a rethink. I truly believe it’s not about punishing people; it’s about helping them change. They’re certainly punishing themselves enough.
The live performance for I’m Not Broken had you rethink your own catalogue to give your incarcerated audience a new context to your songs. Was that tough to pull off?
It was unlike anything I’d done before. I had played many correctional facilities before, since I grew up in Leavenworth, Kansas – which is around many of them. For I’m Not Broken, I was very thoughtful about what the setlist was. I wanted to address these women directly in songs like ‘An Unexpected Rain’ and ‘Into the Dark’ and ‘Burning Woman.’ My aim was to reach a place of understanding and present an internal journey of forgiveness.
One of your most powerful songs is ‘Scarecrow.’ It was written about Matthew Shepard’s murder in 1998. With all these years that have gone by, how do you view the song?
As a time capsule. It was the first time our nation as a whole looked at an incident and a crime and a taking of a life solely because the person was gay. They actually took notice. This was something that happened all the time but was never brought into our living rooms. The first time it was covered so extensively. It was also the first time – because it was so painful – that it nearly broke us as a community. There had to be a change. I think what it did to our nation was people who might not have understood homosexuality, who might’ve thought, ‘Oh, this is horrible’ – those people who had looked the other way finally took a step forward.
How so? Do you think many right-wing people just couldn’t connect to that kind of violence?
They moved forward in understanding that we are actual people who deserve peace. People who may not be in their church or believe what they believe in.… But I think that the news coverage around Matthew created more acceptance. I met his parents later on at the march on Washington when I went on stage to sing ‘Scarecrow.’ It was nearly impossible; that performance brought me to my knees. It was very painful.
Some of your songs are like crystal balls. For example, ‘Bring Me Some Water’ is about a polyamorous and open relationships decades before Grindr. Do you see the clairvoyant nature of your tracks?
They are like crystal balls to me! I just came back from a retreat and remembered songs that I had written 14 years ago, and I listened to them with new ears. I was telling myself where I’m going, what I’m going to do, and the songs came true.
When was the last time you impressed yourself?
Today doing this interview.
You’re doing a fantastic job. If there was a biopic written about your life, who would you cast as the lead?
Florence Pugh has an energy close to what I see myself back in my 30s, 40s. I’ve never met her but I would love to.
You are due for a new album soon. Is it in the works?
It’s been eight years! This album’s going to be very organic. I’m just going to go in with my band and record live.
Do you think America’s new presidential leadership will affect the subjects of your songs?
Times like these are times of great change. This is an opportunity to transform on a mass scale. The working title of my new album touches on this because it’s called The Messenger – at least for now. It came about because I just kept going back to a question that I keep asking: without hope, what are we doing here? I know I’m not here to feed the fire but I can’t help to sing about what I see and hear.
ELIO IANNACCI is an award-winning arts reporter and graduate student at York University whose research interests include ethnomusicology and gender studies. He has contributed to more than 80 publications worldwide, profiling icons such as Barbra Streisand, Lady Gaga, Aretha Franklin and Beyoncé. His academic work is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
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