Melissa Etheridge is known for a lot of things. Her voice, her songs, her Grammy’s and Academy Awards, coming out as a lesbian in 1993, her long-term relationships, her children (born through artificial insemination with donor David Crosby). her messy break up, surviving cancer, and, most recently, rocking Broadway.
Etheridge spoke to Revue magazine about her life now, the media frenzy surrounding her break up with Tammy Lynn Michaels and new relationship with Nurse Jackie co-creator Linda Wallem, making new music and getting a taste for stage musicals.
Check out some of the most interesting tidbits from the frank and revealing Revue interview:
"I try to not pay attention to it," Etheridge says of the press coverage surrounding her split with Michaels last year. "Sometimes, some of the nastier stuff, that hurts and I'm embarrassed mostly. But the other stuff, no one knows what's really going on, nobody can tell. It's a funny machine that just needs fodder to keep it running -- sometimes I'm a part of the fodder."
Etheridge now lives in LA with new girlfriend, Wallem, and says she’s never been happier:
"I'm definitely trying to stay out of the press because Linda is a very private person. She was my best friend for nine years, so it's an interesting relationship. I've never been friends with someone for that long and then entered into a romantic relationship.
"Usually it's that you enter a romantic relationship and hope you can be friends. This way, she already knows everything. She's my friend and it's really pretty amazing. I'm happier than I've ever, ever been."
Etheridge's last release Fearless Love came out in 2010 but Etheridge says she’s already penning a new album. Another project in the works: a possible Broadway show and collaboration with Wallem.
"I'm also writing a musical at the same time as the record, so I [have] a couple irons in the fire. Linda's actually doing the story... it's really edgy and cool. I'm very excited about it."
In the 90s, Etheridge’s fourth album reached chart-topping success with her album Yes I Am, thanks to hits’, “I'm the Only One" and Grammy winner "Come to My Window.”
That album bought my house," she jokes in the article:
"I loved that it was my fourth album that was my biggest, it wasn't my first, and since then I've been trying to make up for it."
Yes I Am was also a reference to Etheridge's coming out. In January 1993 she announced it at the Triangle Ball, a gay/lesbian celebration of President Bill Clinton's first inauguration.
"It sort of presented itself," she said. "It's where everything was leading me. It was coming to a point where my choice to be gender neutral and just say (in interviews) ‘my partner' or ‘my lover' wasn't working. I'd be very evasive and not put a gender in there, but I found sometimes writers would just say things. This one magazine article quoted me as saying ‘my boyfriend' this and ‘my boyfriend' that. I was like, ‘Ahh! I did not say that!' It was horrible."
"I didn't want anyone to think I was lying. Enough people knew. I played gay bars -- that's where I was discovered. I said, ‘This is ridiculous. If people are going to stop listening to me because I'm gay, I don't want them listening to me. They aren't listening to me for the right reasons.'"
For more on Etheridge’s future music, family, and relationship with her kids’ ‘Bio-Dad’ David Crosby, read the full article on RevueWM.com now.
Images courtesy of Getty
