After her son’s death, four years later, Melissa Etheridge rejects the “cycle of grief.”
It is easy to forget that things were not quite as accepting thirty years ago when artists as diverse and well-known as Brandi Carlile, King Princess, Syd, Hayley Kiyoko, and Girl in Red can be so frank and mainstream about their sexuality.
Singing ballads about hitting on other ladies was a daring move in the 1990s. Thus, Melissa Etheridge, a lesbian rocker from Kansas, made a big impression when her album “Yes I Am”—which included the hits “Come to My Window” and “I am the Only One”—was published in 1993. A few years later, the clever, humorous bisexual pop singer-songwriter Jill Sobule published the song “I Kissed a Girl,” which included the actor and model Fabio in the music video.
It so happens that both women are now residing in New York, where they will be presenting brand-new stage memoirs that incorporate song and narrative. Previews for Etheridge’s book, “My Window — A Journey Through Life,” which she co-wrote with her wife Linda Wallem, begin on Thursday at New World Stages. At the Wild Project the following day, Sobule does the same with “F*ck7thGrade.”
The two ladies, who were born in 1961 just a few months apart, have followed similar paths throughout the years, but they did not truly cross paths until Sobule was added to the Melissa Etheridge cruise’s musical program in 2019. Sobule, who recently returned to land after appearing in Matt Schatz’s musical “A Wicked Soul in Cherry Hill” at the Geffen Playhouse, said, “We were getting done in our room, and we were all singing, ‘Come to my porthole.'”
