Music » Singer-Songwriter Rock Music

Yes I Am is the album that catapulted Melissa Etheridge into superstardom. The 1993 collection's mercilessly driven, bluesy songs--nearly all dripping with sensual lyrics and rousing rhythms--made it the ideal breeding ground for a couple of career-enhancing music videos. The eerily possessive rock ballad "Come to My Window" hit the tube first with a bizarre twofold portrait of Etheridge and her guitar and actress Juliette Lewis having a nervous breakdown. This single brought the album into the public consciousness and was quickly followed by the similarly obsessive, slow-groovin' "I'm the Only One" and the co-dependence-battling "If I Wanted To." But the album's real strength is in the hidden gems untouched by MTV programmers. The slow-building "Silent Legacy," the undulating blues scream "Yes I Am," and the playful, acoustic "Ruins" are what make this album a whole. --Sally Weinbach

Exploding onto the late 1980s rock scene with this energetic, sensual, and shamelessly personal debut, Melissa Etheridge instantly proved herself a skilled singer-songwriter and thunderstorm of a performer. This radio-friendly rock collection lays out the Etheridge fundamentals. "Bring Me Some Water," the driven, bluesy plea of an abandoned lover, is easily the strongest cut here. Its infectious rhythmic backdrop perfectly supports Etheridge's rowdy, passionate vocals to make this sexually charged lament unforgettable. This album also launched the radio favorite "Similar Features" and "Like the Way I Do," another uptempo, jealousy-laden rocker. Actually, the album is almost overripe with scathing indictments of former lovers, but it also makes it clear that Etheridge is a growing musician. These early efforts are so power-packed that it's easy to overlook redundancy and focus on all that raw emotion. --Sally Weinbach

An album that never spawned hits on the magnitude of "Bring Me Some Water" or "I'm the Only One" from her debut, Melissa Etheridge's sorely overlooked third effort is a gold mine of poetic contemplation, sensual declarations, and emotional pleas. Of her first five albums, Never Enough is the one that best shows her range. Stepping away from electric guitar-based rock and blues and toward such exploratory tunes as the piano-backed "The Letting Go," the beat- and sample-driven "2001," and the uncommonly poppy "Dance Without Sleeping," Etheridge proves she's not a one-riff musician. She seems to push through her stylistic fears a bit, yet stays comfortably within the boundaries that her raspy belt can reach. Never Enough offers a healthy dose of Etheridge's trademark soul-twisting rock in the form of "Ain't it Heavy" and the angry, possessive of "It's for You." But the addition of pattern-busting songs makes this album a particularly mature, rich, pleasurable listen. --Sally Weinbach

During the dark days of the singer's split from Julie Cypher, her companion of 12 years, Melissa Etheridge retreated to her home studio to pen songs lit from within with her searing pain and confusion. From those heart-wrenching sessions comes arguably Etheridge's finest work. She vents and rages and all but spits on her Tony Llama boots, giving these 10 songs a depth and grit that she only hinted at in her prior six albums. And those early albums were plenty gritty. But early tunes such as "Come to My Window," and "Yes I Am" don't approach the naked vulnerability heard here--even though the breakup was hinted at in "Stronger Than Me," on 1999's Breakdown. Skin peels back layers of Etheridge's pain and addresses her personal melodrama in such a compelling way that her despair is transmuted into true art, as she takes the listener through the stages of grief and recovery. And what a journey, beginning with the bristling "Lover Please" ("Didn't I love you right / Then tell me where are you going dressed to kill tonight? / Oh, this one's gonna hurt like hell") and ending with the stirring "Heal Me," which features background vocals by famous pals Laura Dern and Meg Ryan. That's almost all the help she has on the record; Etheridge plays almost all the instruments and penned all the songs. But, ultimately, Skin is the sound of one heart breaking. --Jaan Uhelszki

Release Date: 1990-06-15, Audio CD, Island

On her fifth album, Melissa tries even harder to become the distaff John Mellencamp or Springsteen, chronicling this American life. In many ways, it is a very autobiographical journey she took, to the places of her childhood in Kansas, like "Shriner's Park." Even if it doesn't contain her best songs, it is ambitious and well-realized and definitely confirms her as America's leading female rock & roll artist. --Chris Nickson

Array

Ugly Americans may be on the wane, but various survivors of the Austin alt-pop outfit do turn out to support frontman Bob Schneider on this solo effort. Lonelyland showcases Schneider's competing interests as a singer-songwriter (nice Elvis Costello-like melodic turns of "Big Blue Sea") and Southern white-boy rapper (most notably on the swampy "Bullets"). But things get really strange on "The World Exploded into Love," on which a sub-Barenaked Ladies spiel is paired with full-blown female operatic accompaniment. Schneider, it turns out, is the son of an opera singer, so the song makes sense biographically, if not musically. While fans of Schneider's prior outfits (Joe Rockhead, Ugly Americans, and the Scabs) will likely find things to love on this album, Lonelyland sounds like the work of a solo artist who's still finding his own voice. --Bill Forman

There's a place that we must go: into the soul, into the heart, into the dark sings Melissa Etheridge in "Into the Dark"; it might serve as the refrain for the entire album, her first since 1995's Your Little Secret. In Breakdown, the singer-songwriter returns to the studio recharged and with a newfound confessional maturity that is at once vulnerable and searingly direct. Despite her phenomenal successes, Etheridge confronts the insecurities of obsessive desire ("Angels Would Fall," with its intricate overlay of religious imagery, touches a new level compared to the savage rawness of her classic "Like the Way I Do"), a bitter breakup ("Stronger than Me"), and an adolescent's confused sexual identity ("Mama I'm Strange"). This journey into the heart of darkness comprises not only sharp-edged self-reflection but also the painful vision of "Scarecrow," a drum & bass-anchored lament for gay murder victim Matthew Shepard. There's a therapeutic sense of catharsis throughout that makes the serenity of "My Lover" and "Sleep" seem like a hard-earned conclusion. With her vocals steely, acid-washed, and forthright as ever, Etheridge and coproducer/lead guitarist John Shanks concoct a rich and tightly webbed acoustic-and-amplified soundscape. Several of the songs have a sameness of tone, but Etheridge's passion never sounds fake, whether in the guitar-charged chorus of the title track or "Enough of Me"'s gently rising chords. And in its total effect, Etheridge's Breakdown sounds a lot more like a breakthrough to still a higher level. --Tom May

The follow-up to the universally acclaimed Scar album from songwriter Joe Henry, who gained widespread attention for the work he did on Solomon Burke's Grammy Award winning Don't Give Up On Me album. Twelve brilliant tracks recorded with backing from avant-garde clarinetist Don Byron and trumpeter Ron Miles. Digipak. Anti. 2003.