It doesn’t take long for Melissa Etheridge to feel like an old friend. Seconds into our latest conversation, she’s already asking what I think of her new album — “Rise,” her first in seven years — and within moments we’re deep into the kind of conversation that makes you forget you’re supposed to be conducting an interview. That’s always been our history.
Seven years is a long time. Long enough to grieve, to rebuild, to sit with loss until it becomes something you can sing about. For Etheridge, “Rise” is that album — the one that had to wait until she had the words. And the words, it turns out, arrived with a kind of hard-won clarity: about the radical power of controlling your own mind and what it means to keep living after the unthinkable.
We’ve talked at so many different moments in her life — most recently in 2025, when the Southern California wildfires forced her from her home. In 2023, she spoke to me about the death of her son, Beckett Cypher, who died from opioid addiction in 2020 at age 21. Since then, the Melissa Etheridge making “Rise” has been through more of the kind of things that either break you or reshape you. She sounds, unmistakably, like the latter.
We spoke ahead of Pride Month — when the stakes for our community feel as high as they’ve felt in years — and I wanted to know what she’s carrying into it. What she’d say to people who are tired or scared. What it felt like to finally get that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination. And what, after all this time, she wants us to take from this album.
Her answer, like the record itself, keeps coming back to the same thing: We’re going to fall to the earth sometimes. But our natural state is rising.
What feels most different about the Melissa Etheridge who made “Rise”?
Let me say that the song “Rise” was very much inspired by the fires, because I was feeling for my city and good God, the Palisades. It was just really breaking my heart. But I knew that we would rise from the ashes. And God, just the last few years have just been really rough on us.
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And then, of course, what you’ve gone through on your own.
Yes, some great loss, of course, and people can absolutely understand that. Because of everything I’ve been through — cancer and [being] gay and seeing how things play out — I don’t get depressed. I know the basic human nature is joy. And really, we are meant to be happy. Things happen. But I’ve lived long enough now to really understand that.
I felt very inspired to speak and sing this message: You’re going to fall to the earth, you’re going to taste the dirt, but then you’re going to rise. And why is it so easy to make it so hard? Sometimes it’s so hard to understand that we are supposed to be happy.
We’re not supposed to feel guilty because someone else is not happy. We are in charge of our own happiness. When I realized that I don’t need someone else to change to make me happy, that was a big one. And I was trying to really put that in the song when I said, “There’s a hope I dare not speak/ frustrating, most people find,” because we want them to change so that we’ll feel safe. But that’s not how it works. You don’t need to change to set me free because I’m always free to change my mind. I can think differently of MAGA, I can think differently of people who are afraid themselves. It’s up to us how we feel about it. We are in control of our response. And I think once I got that, my life really became easier and more joyful.
I love when I get on a call with you and we immediately get this deep. That really is our history.
That’s what we do.
So then, how do these learned perspectives play into the new music?
Over the years, I have truly come to understand the connectivity of all of us, of the human race. And to see that we all just want to be loved. We all want to feel safe. We all want our family, our immediate loves to feel safe, all of us. And it looks different to everyone. And I wanted to write an album that was accessible. I had done a lot of writing in the last 15 years that was me going, “Oh, I want to do whatever I want. I want to express myself and try this and try that,” because I just got off the record label.
When I sat down with this a couple years ago, I sat down to say, “OK, I really want to think this through. I don’t want to just write some songs and put them out. I want to craft songs this time, songs that people want to not just listen to, but that affect them and that they can relate to — simple but powerful.” So there was a lot of editing. It was a lot of finding the shortest, most powerful way to express this emotion.
“Call You” feels like, to me, the emotional center of the record, this idea of reaching for someone who is no longer there. How did writing that song change what the rest of the album could be?
It was the first song I wrote. I needed to create a song where I could sing over and over, “I will not stop living, even though I can’t call you anymore.” That’s for me. That’s for me to go, “Yes, I feel this. I’ve got your picture and I’m holding it here. That physical part of you is over, but I still feel connected. I’m connected to you when I garden and I put my fingers in the dirt. I’m connected when I’m out in the world. And I just let the thought of you be there with me.”
I couldn’t get preachy about it, I just had to present it so simply with, “Yes, this is an unbearable pain, yet I can set it free and let it go through me and I’m grateful I loved someone so much that I had a child that I loved so much for the time I had him, and I’m going to keep living and have our foundation and know that his life was not in vain.”
Because you recorded that song first, how did it change every song that came after it?
Well, it enabled me to then walk in a space of emotion that was heavy.
So I could then sing “Rise” and go, “Yeah, you’re going to fall to the earth, but you’re going to rise.” I could sing “Being Alive.” I could say, “This is going to break me. This is going to bleed for a while, but hours turn to days.” And I think the whole album is me going, you move on. Life changes every moment. Every breath, there’s something different and it’s never over.
This past year, you received your first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination.
I feel like I’m in the room.
You had said that your friends have been asking for years why it hadn’t happened before. What did it mean to you to both get the nomination and then to learn what the actual results were when you didn’t make it in this year?
It’s very nebulous. I didn’t do my career thinking, “Oh, I want to be in the Rock Hall.” It’s something that is there that is subjective in rock and roll. It’s impossible to define, and they’re trying to, and I think they’re playing catch up. And again, I’m just happy to have been in the conversation. I imagine that someday it will happen. I hope I’m still alive. That’s just where I’m at, because I want to get up and be at that party, that’s all. I just want to play that night. That’s what I’m looking forward to. But I’m doing OK. I don’t need this, but it’s fun.
Maybe your fans care more than you do?
My wife definitely does!
What does it mean to you to be called an icon at this point in your career?
I don’t know what it means, but I do understand.
Somebody very important and influential.
Well, there you go. That I’ve been around long enough. I’ve certainly done some really cool stuff. And if I can be inspirational to people, if they can look at an icon of something that represents somebody who has been through it, somebody important that has made the choices that they can identify with, then fantastic. I’m all for it.
What does holding the line mean to you right now during Pride season? And what would you say to people in this community who are tired or scared?
Again, I would go to their own personal experience. The best thing you can do for the community is to do for you. Make sure you are thinking enough joyful things. Make sure you’re reading enough, because you can bury yourself in doomscrolling. And you also want to know that there are amazing things happening: families changing and beautiful stories happening every day, just as, yes, there is some negative stuff. But make sure you give yourself a break from negativity and then you will see more positivity. You’ll be surrounded. You’ll bring more positive people toward you. It all starts with you. And it’s not about going and making somebody else change. It’s being such an amazing, loving community and knowing that people change just because they experience you and see you.
You can’t take care of other people unless you take care of yourself.
Simple, simple, simple, simple. Let’s all do that.
What do you hope someone carries with them when they hear these songs on “Rise” during Pride season?
That you can create that certainty inside yourself. All of us are so much more powerful than we know. And that coming out and being out and being who you are is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your community. I’ve seen decades of change come from people going, “Oh, well, that guy I work with, oh, he’s gay and I like him. Oh, that person down the street, they’re gay. Maybe that’s not so bad.” That’s what changes the world. And we have changed it. And believe me, I’ve seen so much change. We’re doing OK.
You experienced this all in a really personal way when you came out on a major platform.
It was very, very frightening.
Well, that means a lot hearing that from somebody who just told me there’s less uncertainty in your mind. Clearly, you’ve come a long way.
Yes. I’ve seen it and I’ve seen people change. I remember when in the late ’80s, early ’90s, we didn’t even dare mention gay marriage. That wasn’t even a thing. We didn’t even know what we would ever call it. We were just trying not to get killed and lose our jobs and get thrown in jail. And so I’m married, and my daughter’s married to a woman. We have that right. And yes, stay alert, stay awake and find your joy.
Let people see how loving and joyful you are. And believe in the goodness of people and that we are always moving up, accelerating and becoming more respectful of our differences.