Melissa Etheridge takes a look backward

By MARK KENNEDY

Associated Press

NEW YORK

At 51, Melissa Etheridge isn’t coasting on her accomplishments. Take her guitar work.

The Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, whose 12th studio album was released last week, challenged herself to play all the guitar parts this time around for the first time.

“I kind of thought when I was 30 that you’re as good as you’re going to get. And that’s not true,” she says. “I have gotten so much better, and I’m celebrating it on this album.”

The album, “4th Street Feeling,” has a dozen songs that mostly look backward — to her parents, childhood and breakups. It’s named after a street in her hometown of Leavenworth, Kan.

“I’m exploring being 51. I’m exploring the maturity, the wisdom that just comes from having gone around the sun 50 times,” she says. “My experience is, ‘Oh, I’m never really going to get it right. I’m never going to get it done. But that’s not the point here.’ The point is the journey.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Etheridge talked about the new album, being a political icon and her current project: writing a Broadway musical.

Q. What are you pulling from on this album?

A. The influences on this album range from pop to rock to country to folk to R&B to soul. That’s what I grew up with. I grew up with one radio station — one AM station that would play Tammy Wynette and then play Marvin Gaye and then play Led Zeppelin. It was the top 40 station. So I never thought of there being a difference between these genres. So my music has always kind of had bits and pieces of everything.

Q. Have you found yourself becoming more or less political lately?

A. I’ve found that I’m just political just by being who I am. Being a gay person, being a person who chooses to partake in cannabis, being a breast- cancer survivor — these are all very political situations that I didn’t choose, that are naturally who I am. So just by answering the questions, I become political. I’m considered an activist, but I do not spend any more time doing those things than anyone else. It’s just that I choose to stand and be truthful about it.

Q. If you do write a musical for Broadway, you’d join a list of singer-songwriters gravitating to the theater, such as Sheryl Crow, Cyndi Lauper and Dave Stewart.

A. Twenty years ago I wanted to write something for Broadway. By the time I finally get around to it, everyone’s doing it. There’s been so many types of musicals and it’s a funny genre, because there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.