Interview With Melissa Etheridge

AE: In the press materials, it said that during your chemotherapy you went through and listened to all your previous albums. What do they tell you about yourself?
ME: [Sighs.] It told me that on a subconscious level, there was a lot more going on with my feelings and emotions than I recognized. I think growing up in the Midwest, I was taught to oppress and suppress and repress [laughs] my feelings and desires and dreams, and we're supposed to see the world as very large, but we're supposed to think very small and stay in our little box.

It's like the first line of "California": "Only a few shall get, but everyone shall need." We'll all want it, but there's only a few that's going to get it. And that sort of mentality — it's hard and it creates this desire, this constant, constant desire and this disappointment … and now I've forgotten, actually your question. [Laughter.]

AE: I was just asking about what your older albums taught you about yourself and your experience so far —
ME: Right, right. I did a lot of searching, and I really thought that happiness would be in fame and fortune, and if I went to California and I ran after that Hollywood dream and I became rich and famous, then I would be fine. And of course, my path was very different than what I thought it would be. And I did get to the top of the mountain, and I looked around and went, "Wow, this is a really lonely place." [Laughs.] And it's impossible to stay there.

So now I see these young women who are climbing up that mountain going, "Whoopee! Give me the brass ring," you know, "Here I go." And they get up there, and then there they are, and so they start drinking and they don't think they're pretty enough; they don't think they're skinny enough. Believe me, I've been there. I tried to be skinnier and prettier and I did the whole thing.

AE: Really?
ME: In my own way. [Laughs.] I didn't say I succeeded, but I felt that emotion.

AE: Looking back on your career now, do you have any advice for young musicians who are seeking that same dream?
ME: [Emphatically.] Oh yeah.

AE: What would you tell them?
ME: I'd say do it because you love it. Do what you love. Do not do it to be rich and famous. Do not do it to achieve something to fill up some sort of hole inside of you, because it will not.

Do make your music because you love it, and make the music that comes to you and stand wherever you can and sing, and sing what you love. And if you do it because you love it and you find your happiness in it, then you will have contentment. Then if something does come along, then you will be on solid ground and you will be able to handle whatever the outside world might give you.

AE: I wanted to ask you a bit about one of the songs on the album, "An Unexpected Rain." For me, it was the most like your earlier stuff.
ME: People who have listened to me for a long time and who are longtime fans and know my first work and stuff, they all say that, and it was purposely done that way. Because the subject matter is about the '80s and the choices I made, and that whole time period. I purposely made it sound — I approached it in the way that I did my first records and the sort of music that I was making then. I wanted to conjure up the sort of sound that I had back then.

AE: How has your songwriting, or music making methodology, I guess, changed since then? What has developed?
ME: Well, I think … [laughs] I tried to chase some musical styles there for a while, trying to think that my own style wasn't good enough and that I had to have a beat or … there was something else, I needed to be more like someone else. You see that in some of my work a little bit.

I never got carried away with it, but I always did try it, and I think whenever I did, it kind of lessened my impact because I didn't trust my own power. I didn't trust my own talent and that what I am is good enough, and that's what people want to hear. So when I finally got that through my head, I approached this album totally from a place of joy and love, and I can't wait to make this record the way that I make music and not worry about anything but just getting the song down.