THERE’S SOMETHING ODDLY timeless about Melissa Etheridge.
It’s been 22 years since her self-titled debut, yet she’s stayed with the same record label for all those years and still maintains the same gutsy, urgent growl that made her earliest singles so distinctive. She even pulls off a hippie-dippy fringed jacket on the cover of her latest, “Fearless Love,” without looking at all dated or passe.
It would be so easy to be critical of Etheridge’s sound: after all, she’s rocked the angry-chick vibe for over two decades, and — love her or hate her — you always know what to expect from a Melissa Etheridge album.
While that consistency could yield a tedious predictability, Etheridge never sounds complacent, and that is what makes her records sound so reliably fresh. On the album’s title track, she howls, “I want a fearless love / I won’t settle for anything less.” Even the cliche in the lyrics melts away behind the raw passion in Etheridge’s voice: it’s hard not to nod along while listening to her and think, “Yeah! I want that too!”
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That empowerment permeates her music, not to mention her personal life. She has been a poster child for several notable causes (gay rights and breast cancer), so it’s no surprise to hear her venomous attack on her home state’s anti-gay marriage amendment Proposition 8 on the particularly feisty “Miss California” and her tribute to her wife Tammy Lynn Michaels on the song “Indiana.” Still, Etheridge never allows her songs to be overshadowed by her politics: “Miss California” is more about the feeling of being done wrong than the specifics of the amendment.
Share this articleShare“Indiana”, though, is a pretty straightforward tribute to Michaels’s life, which is a bit of a departure for Etheridge. Her best songs have come from her own first-person perspective, so her choice to tell someone else’s story feels awkward. (The song becomes even more awkward, since Etheridge and Michaels announced their separation earlier this month. Ouch.)
Still, most of the rest of “Fearless Love” shows off what Etheridge does best: channel and convey simple emotions from her point of view.
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“Nervous” is a saucy number that finds Etheridge howling about jitters from a lover, while she yearns for companionship on “Company.” These songs certainly have an autobiographical element to them, but Etheridge’s style is to leave specific details out in favor of raw emotion: it makes every song sound completely universal, giving “Fearless Love” the same classic timelessness at which Etheridge has always excelled.
Written by Express contributor Catherine Lewis
Photo by Lester Cohen
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