“This is a playlist I’ve never done anywhere,” says Melissa Etheridge. Billboard's Behind the tracklist podcast of the performance captured on their new live album, I am not broken: Live from Topeka Correctional Facility.
“Unexpected Rain” is “a deep song on a deep album, The awakening“I rarely do ‘Unexpected Rain.’ I rarely do ‘The Shadow of a Black Crow,’ which is about addiction. I rarely do ‘Into the Dark.’ I rarely do ‘Love Will Live.’ They were very, very specific about what I wanted to talk about.”
It was a unique concert in more ways than one.
Etheridge's performance before 2,500 inmates at the women's prison in Topeka, Kansas, was recorded for a two-part docuseries. I'm not broken for the Paramount+ streaming platform. The two-time Grammy winner says she had wanted to perform in a prison for decades. Etheridge grew up in Leavenworth, Kansas, near the prison where country great Johnny Cash performed in 1970. Etheridge, 7, wasn’t able to hear the performance from outside the prison walls but was struck by the accounts of the show. “We had just gotten the article from the newspaper and I read it right then and there and I thought, ‘Wow, prisons must be a place of great entertainment and one day I’m going to grow up and perform in a prison. ’”
The idea came up again when she changed direction a decade ago. About five years ago, her management team began reaching out to the penitentiary to see if a production would be feasible. Once the idea was approved and Etheridge received the green light from Paramount, she hired a production company, Shark Pig.
The Topeka concert included many deep cut scenes because the filmmakers asked Etheridge to choose songs based on themes the series would address, such as trauma, motherhood, hope, redemption and consequences. At the concert, Etheridge introduced each song by talking about the specific themes.
The often raucous show also featured many of Etheridge’s best-known songs. The show opens with “American Girl,” a song that is not a single from her 1993 album. Yes I amThe set closed with their greatest hits: “Come to My Window” and “I'm The Only One” by Yes I amand “Bring Me Some Water” and “Like the Way I Do” from their 1988 debut.
I'm not broken It also captures Etheridge’s process in writing a song specifically for the concert. “A Burning Woman” was based on her correspondence and conversation with five of the inmates. The women spoke openly about their circumstances, how they ended up in prison, and their lives during incarceration.
“We sat in the prison library and we all talked,” Etheridge recalls, “and just listening to their stories, laughing, talking, crying, whatever we did, was so powerful to me that I couldn’t help but humanize them, because they are human.”
Listen to the full interview with Melissa Etheridge in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart either As long as.
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