May 26, 2010
Melissa Etheridge :: on love, fear and breaking up
Melissa Etheridge is one of the most respected and visual figures for the GLBT community. Her artistry and professional work seems to always be in alignment with her personal life, so when the announcement of the end to her marriage with actress Tammy Lynn Michaels hit the news, the GLBT community quietly gasped. Many took it personally. After all, the couple had become "the poster couple" for the same-sex marriage fight in America.
Their union was one of the most positive images for the movement of same-sex marriage. Remember the kiss at the Oscars when her song, "I Need to Wake Up," won for Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth? The Oscars where Ellen DeGeneres was the host? Billions of people in the world saw how Melissa and Tammy celebrated such a victory. They did it in the same manner as any of the actors did that evening. They turned to their spouse, kissed and then ran to the stage to accept the prize.
"I'm as disappointed as anyone else that this marriage commitment did not go the way we had hoped," Etheridge explains, "I can only say I'm learning. I always hope to inspire and to some, I'm in the role as a hero, but heroes fall and when they fall hopefully they will learn."
Speaking the truth
As the saying goes, "An artist tends to wear their hearts on their sleeves," and Etheridge has never shied away from letting us see into her heart. When we first met her in the late 1980s, the lyrics to her songs always pulled us closer because we could relate and understand. Perhaps the calling was because those songs spoke the truth?
The early Etheridge songs -- "Bring Me Some Water," "Ain't it Heavy," "I'm the Only One," "Come to My Window," "I Want to Come Over," "Angels Would Fall," "I Run for Life" and "I Need to Wake Up" among them-have rewarded her with five Platinum albums. Yes I Am elevated Etheridge to mega stardom and awarded her a pair of Grammys. Melissa Etheridge is now considered to be one of the greatest all-time female rock icons. She is also a mother and a cancer survivor. She is an outspoken cultural, political and human rights activist and her views often trigger debate.
Being an open gay artist in the recording industry is not always welcomed news and for many artists they simply will not tell the truth. For every Melissa Etheridge there's a Ricky Martin. However, this is all changing with the arrival of new artists such as Adam Lambert and country music star, Chely Wright. Wright recently announced her sexual preference and explained in a Los Angeles Times interview that a country music star can't be gay.
"It's the unforgivable," Chely Wright explained, "Historically, country music would rather an artist be drunk or a drug addict than be gay. They will forgive you if you if you beat your wife, lose your kids to state, get six divorces, make a sex tape, get labeled as a tramp - any and all of it is better than being gay."
Perhaps musicians are no longer slaves to the recording industry. In the 1990s, Prince, or at the time "The Artist Formally Known As," once wrote "Slave" on his forehead due to his bitter relationship with his record label, Time-Warner Music. It is no secret that the music industry has hit a terrible financial blow due to the new ways listeners are finding their music. Consumers are free to listen and then purchase what they want via downloading, You-Tube, My Space and other internet options. Younger consumers want real, truthful artists and this attitude has turned things upside down in a good way. The Killers, Lady Gaga and Vampire Weekend all have a visible and out GLBT presence on the industry. Will coming out of the closet still be a "career suicide" for musical artists now? Perhaps Chely Wright will attract a crossover following such as Country star Taylor Swift, who may be singing country, but her following is a very diverse crowd.
Story continues on following page.
Watch Melissa Etheridge's video for "Fearless Love."
Out from the start
Melissa Etheridge has been an out and open musician from the beginning. When her private life started to become tabloid fodder, there was no hiding -- not that she wanted to and when news broke of her recent divorce, the tabloids once again were there to invade.
"My journey is one of discovering myself," Etheridge explains more about her recent divorce, "And the only love that I can do perfectly is the love I must find for myself."
Actually, the climate has shifted in the country, if not the world. People demand the truth now after so many years of being told lies, or "twisted" facts about the war, Wall Street and the economy. The arrival of President Obama and his campaign of "change" have in fact shifted the majority and people as to what is the truth.
"This album had to be about the songs," says of her tenth studio album, Fearless Love. In early 2009, when the dynamics of her marriage started to shift, Etheridge started to think about this album. The underlying theme for it centered on love.
"Everything is either fear or love," she says. "As I started writing, the working title of the album was Songs of Love and Fear."
Each of the song has an ingredient of love and fear and the battle between the two. There is the feeling of loneliness, or desire or longing. There is the universal feeling of fear when we fall in love. It takes us to a new high, yet that strong, often blinding emotion of fear always manages to creep in.
"The art in my work is my channeling the emotional experience of my everyday life," Etheridge explains her artistic process, "My opinions -- My reactions to fear, I feel have some universality to them. We're all in this together, right?"
Fearless Love arrives two and half years after her autobiographical The Awakening and six years after her battle with breast cancer. Also influencing the messages in Fearless Love were Melissa's four children.
"I've been amazingly blessed. I can't help but be influenced now by my children," she explains, "It's no longer just about me. My journey with them is such a tight rewarding and sometimes challenging experience, but kids are pure -- they are truth. This is the first album they were interested in and saw the entire process. I listen to their opinions."
Melissa and her partners were one of the first in the GLBT community to start raising children before it became commonplace in GLBT households. Yes, there were/are the children who were birthed when closeted GLBT members of our community married and then came out later in life, but for lesbian partners in the early 90's, there was a movement to raise their own children. Gay men followed by adopting and suddenly "I love my two mommies," and "I love my two daddies," T-Shirts started to surface. Now, it is quite common and accepted as illustrated on ABC's "Modern Family" television show.
Etheridge is the mother of two children (ages 13 and 11) from a prior relationship and the 3-year old twins she birthed this time with Tammy. Etheridge commented on how our GLBT community really support and help each other out.
"We really can 'Make a Village' work," Etheridge observes, "Perhaps I'm showing my children (and myself,) that growth in a relationship is about evolving and growing. There is this myth that it's going to stay that way, but we are supposed to evolve and grow. It will always morph into something."
The songs on Fearless Love do show that Etheridge has evolved into something else, yet the lyrics are centered on one theme -- love. From the title track, "Fearless Love," Etheridge shows us that we must love without fear. In "Company," there is the heartache that we have in the wee-hours of the night when loneliness slaps us because we are without love. There's also the heart piercing cry, "To be Loved," where Melissa sings "If I can love myself -- I'm still waiting to be loved." In, "Miss California," there is the distrust when we are rejected by love.
"Miss California is actually about Prop-8," Melissa explains the story behind the lyrics for "Miss California," "Every one thinks it's about that former fallen beauty queen, but I don't know her. When I started to write it, I wanted to address my home state (California) and how we felt when we lost the right to marry. It felt like I was spurned by a lover."
Melissa will take her music and her political causes on tour this summer and with the current oil spill in the Gulf, her mission couldn't be more welcomed and timely.
"This disaster is showing us," Etheridge cringes, "that these multi-national companies do not have our best interest and we really have to look at this fossil fuel issue. We have the power to what we buy. Hopefully this disaster will show us that we must change."
Melissa will begin her Fearless Love 2010 tour this June at the Hard Rock Calling Festival in London on June 26th, followed by performances in Germany and Holland. In July, Melissa embarks on her North American Fearless Love Tour. Dates and cities may be found on
