Melissa Etheridge: Breakdown : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Melissa Etheridge is a powerhouse singer, a fervent performer, a crucial activist and an all-around good egg, but her albums' no-frills heartland rock rarely takes her to that higher plane she deserves. Her sixth album in twelve years starts out much the same as its dependable predecessors: heartfelt, introspective, robustly sung but otherwise indistinguishable from the last polished Bryan Adams product. Yet Breakdown takes a turn halfway through. "Mama I'm Strange" addresses nonconformity with nervy candor. "Scarecrow" honors murdered gay-bashing victim Matthew Shepard in bold, enraged strokes. There's a welcome fragility in the acoustic-led arrangements of "Truth of the Heart," "How Would I Know" and "Sleep" that matches the singer's newly nuanced songwriting maturity. But the career-peaking clincher is "My Lover," a slowly building, wildly ambivalent and sometimes wicked ode to codependency that comes from the same scary soul-searching place as John Lennon's "Mother." Finally, Etheridge the artist eclipses Etheridge the human being.