Into The Music
Melissa Etheridge has been one of the most consistent rock presences in American music for over three decades, and the word “consistent” here is not a backhanded compliment. It means she has maintained a specific artistic identity through eras that chewed up artists who tried harder to adapt, and she has arrived at 2026 with a new album that is, by most accounts, among the most personally honest work of her career.
That career started in 1988 with her self-titled debut, a guitar-forward rock record that felt slightly out of time in the era of big-budget pop production and slightly ahead of time in terms of what the Nineties singer-songwriter explosion would eventually look like. She got louder with Never Enough in 1992, and then the world paid attention. “Come to My Window” and “I’m the Only One” from the 1993 record Yes I Am became radio staples of a particular intensity. The Grammy followed. The public coming out at the 1993 inaugural gala followed.
Her voice is the consistent thread. It is a blues-rooted instrument, built for physical expression rather than precision. She bends notes, she strains at the top of phrases, she does not smooth anything over. In a period when vocal production became increasingly automated and corrected, Etheridge kept performing like someone who believes the roughness is the point.
The years after her commercial peak saw her working through personal loss, health challenges, and the kind of media scrutiny that comes with public life. She lost her son Beckett in 2020. The grief from that loss shaped the songs that became Rise, her seventeenth studio album, released this week on Sun Records. She co-wrote all 11 tracks and co-produced with Shooter Jennings.
Rise is being described as her most personal record, and that is saying something for an artist whose work has always been autobiographical. The opening track “Bein’ Alive” is a gentle arrival. “Call You” is explicitly about her son. “The Other Side of Blue,” a duet with Chris Stapleton, is about presence. The title track carries the core message plainly: you fall, you taste the dirt, you hurt, and then you rise.
She is currently on the road supporting the album. The tour started March 26. Etheridge has always been a live performer first, and the stage is where the combination of her voice and her guitar work makes the most complete argument for why she has lasted.
Shooter Jennings, who has worked with artists including Brandi Carlile and Tanya Tucker, called Etheridge “one of the greatest rock and roll artists of our lifetime.” It is not hyperbole. It is the kind of assessment that becomes obvious once you bother to say it out loud.