Island
2007
The Awakening
About This Album
At this stage of the game, after Melissa Etheridge's nearly 20 years in the big-time music biz, eight studio albums, chart-topping singles, endless videos, and live and greatest-hits packages (not to mention world tours), her fans are either going to go for it or they're not. The Awakening is likely not the kind of record to win a few thousand new fans over. Yet, given a particular life-changing circumstance or two and word of mouth, it might be. Musically, there isn't anything here that you haven't heard before from Etheridge. If you're a fan that's a great thing, right? (One need only remember that when 1995's Your Little Secret dropped, so did some people who had followed her from the beginning -- she won most of them back, but that slick set was the wrong track to take after the confessional and anthemic Yes I Am.) The Awakening is, according the artist, a concept record. Before you groan, this one is based on life experience, not solely ideas or opinions. For this singer and songwriter, that experience was cancer. The title of this recording is what she learned during her journey down that road and through convalescence, true, but it's also a straightforward look back and forward through a life -- her own.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,7 and 16)

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