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| Photo courtesy melissaetheridge.com |
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HOME > SOVO SCENE > MUSIC
By: BUCK C COOKE
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Nineteen years since her first effort, lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge releases her ninth studio album, “The Awakening,” on Sept. 25. With it, she embarks on a new phase in her career and personal life that involves quantum physics and devotion to her family.
Etheridge took a break from parenting with wife Tammy Lynn Michaels and public appearances to speak candidly with Southern Voice about the album that's a sure bet to heat up autumn for gay fans, as well as her new outlook on life.
Here's everything she had to say, in her own words.
Etheridge on 'The Awakening'
It is a concept album in that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, it flows all the way through... It came from the change I went through going through chemotherapy and going through the cancer diagnosis.
I came to the huge realization that I create what I do. I create my reality… every moment I am making choices. And those choices dictate the kind of life that I’m going to have. Once I realized that I have the power to do those things, I started examining my life and all the choices that I made.
The first part of the album is a look back. The first song is called “California.” It’s about me growing up in the Midwest and thinking California had all of my dreams, and that they were going to come true there.
There is a song called “Unexpected Rain,” and it’s about landing in the gay community and playing the bars in southern California and making some choices there that I am not so proud of, like we all do in our early 20s.
On her past and the song 'Message to Myself'
That song comes from when I was in chemotherapy, and Tammy asked me if I had ever listened to all of my records, one right after the other. No, good Lord, no, I haven’t done that.
Since I had weeks and weeks to do nothing, we spent three days listening to the first one, and we’d stop after each song and say, “Gosh, this is what I was writing about, this is the experience I had.”
As I went through them, I would see that a lot of times I’d write things that I didn’t know consciously at the time that I was feeling, but later it was obvious — “Oh, gosh, I should have gotten out of that relationship” — but I was writing about it before I had gotten out.
I realized I was sending messages to my self, future self. My future self is listening to my past work. If that’s what happens — if I can write in ‘93 “Nothing fills this blackness that has seeped into my chest” and then in 2004 I have breast cancer — I think, “Yikes, you know, wait a minute, I need to start creating some ‘Love is what get when love is what you speak/ What you fear can make you weak’ and all those things.”
I wrote down “Well, I’m sending out a message to myself/ So that when I hear it on the radio/ I am fine and I am loved,” and I am sending that to my future self.
That is what this whole album is based on. I read a lot of stuff — everything from cosmology and reincarnation to string theory and quantum physics — I read everything. I came up with the idea that everyone is saying the same thing. Our thoughts and our feelings really dictate what happens, and that’s the gist of this album.
On the country-inspired song "Threesome"
You either love it or hate it. That is the conclusion I have come to as my fans have been listening to it. Some are like “Yeah! I can’t wait to go two-stepping to this!”
It is a country rock song, a Southern rock song, and there are people who hate country rock songs. The song itself came about because in the months I was writing this album, I promised myself that anything that came to me I would write and write to the finish.
I wouldn’t judge it or throw it out until I had given it every possibility. Another one of my rules was that if the song scared me, if I was like, “Oh, no, I can’t do that!” then I had to put it on the album. Those were my rules going into the thing.
Tammy was pregnant and in her first trimester and was sleeping a ...
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