Nearly 40 years into her career (38, to be precise, since her brilliant self-titled debut album), Melissa Etheridge is not only having more fun than ever, she is enjoying one of her biggest years yet.
She has a superb new record, Rise, including a duet with superstar Chris Stapleton, and a highly anticipated co-headlining tour with country icon Wynonna Judd. And the icing on the cake is she is nominated for the first time for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yes, 2026 is proving to be a very good year for Etheridge.
Most importantly though for Etheridge, she has found her sweet spot as both an artist and person. A wife and mother, Etheridge, who tells us, “I never thought I’d have a family,” is reveling in the balance of both worlds. The result is more fun making music as she explained during our hour-long chat.
Hit Parader: Congratulations on the Rock Hall nomination.
Melissa Etheridge: Oh, that’s fun. Thank you.
HP: Who would be the dream person to induct you? And who would be your dream collaboration?
Etheridge: You know what? Anybody who’s interested, really. But collaborations? It depends on who’s there. If Bruce is there, I would certainly always love to do something with Bruce. I’m hoping I can get Taylor Swift to come, and maybe rock with her. I’m hoping Sheryl Crow will be there. We could do something together and just whoever really wants to.
HP: I did interviews not long ago with both Chris Robinson from Black Crowes and Billy Corgan, who both now are around their late 50s, early 60s. We talked about the fact that when you’re in your 20s, there’s so much competition. But as you get older, they’re having so much fun with the sense of community that now exists because there’s nothing more to prove. And we had spoken in the past about the fact that when you were coming up, there was definitely that issue of pitting women against each other for radio for example.
Etheridge: The truth back then was when I first went to radio with my first album, they would tell us, “Oh, I’m sorry, we’re already playing a woman.” And you’re like, “Oh, Jesus. So, there is really only one of us.” But it is so good not to be in that state anymore, to just be playing the music and not worrying that if I get it, somebody else won’t, or if they get it, I won’t, and there’s not enough. It’s really nice to just go, “Yeah, we’re just going to have some fun, and we’re all singing and playing, and we’ve all been blessed, and we’re great.”
HP: For all of you, this is just the natural state of life as you get older. Other things matter more. I love the fact that on your Instagram, you have it listed as “Mother, rockstar, activist.” as you get older, you realize it matters, but it doesn’t matter the way you thought it did when you were 23.
Etheridge: Exactly, life is completely different from when I was 23. And that Instagram profile was actually written by my son years ago. I love that he put mother first. And I was like, “Oh, that means that he knows that I put that first.”
HP: It’s also nice to have that, for lack of a better term, separation of church and state, But I remember talking to Patti Smith, who’s as badass a woman as there is. And she was telling me that when she’s home, she’s doing laundry. That when she’s home, she’s mom.
Etheridge: Yes, I make dinner. I’m not so good at cleaning. My wife does that a little better than I do. But life is number one, and your life is your family and your home. I never thought I would have a family. I didn’t think that was in the cards for me. And I had four children, and it’s surprising and very rewarding because I can walk off the stage when there’s always the end of the show. I can always go to my wife, I can always go to my children, I could always go home and that’s really good to know that I have all of that. It’s a lovely balance
HP: I’m sure it also makes music a lot more fun for you.
Etheridge: Much more fun absolutely and now that my children are older, I don’t have as much separation fear like, “Oh. I’m not there for them.” None of my children have ever said that I’m not around enough, ever.
HP: So, when you’re making Rise, which is a wonderful album, is it so much less pressure internally?
Etheridge: Definitely making this record was so much less stressful. There’s not that [pressure], “Oh, it’s got to have a hit. Where’s the hit? Where’s the rock radio thing?” I don’t think about that anymore. I just think, “Is this the best way to express this emotion that I’m thinking and feeling? Is this the best way to bring that about? Oh, how can I make this even more delicious?” And it was just amazing. Because I recorded here in L.A., I was home for dinner every night, and that was really fun, too.
HP: I’ve talked about this with so many people over the years. Cooking is so much like music in that once you get comfortable with it, there’s a creative freedom to it. You play with it and you’re improvising. Of course, when you start off, you’re following the recipes and then you get more comfortable and you go from following the recipe to feeling like John Coltrane.
Etheridge: Exactly, that’s what I’ve done with my chicken recipes. I looked at them and I followed them and then I put a little bit more of this, a little bit more of that. Now I’m just improvising. I’m throwing all kinds of stuff in. That’s what life’s about – creating. I create in the garden, on the road, in the kitchen. I create wherever I go. That’s what it’s about – creating, building and moving forward.
HP: Then, as you get more successful, you get to create with different people and learn from them as well, like Chris Stapleton. I remember seeing a few years ago at a concert, blew me away. Even though he is considered “country,” I said, it’s exactly like seeing Neil Young in the 70s.
Etheridge: Yeah, I think the genre labels are all messed up. I think we need to shuffle them up and start over again because you can’t pigeonhole people anymore. I was always very hard to put into a genre and so I just said rock and roll. But many people have said folk rock, country rock, midwestern rock, singer/songwriter. Nowadays there’s americana, country and outlaw country and they all sound like rock and roll to me, but okay.
HP: Talk about working with different people this time around. I’ve followed your career since the beginning and it’s very rare for you to do a duet? And I use the term duet because it makes me think back to like Marvin [Gaye] and Tammi [Terrell].
Etheridge: Yeah, that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to throw some guy on my song and he’s singing harmony, and you can’t hear it. We went in and I wanted to write a song with him. I wanted him to feel like he was part of the song so that we could sing it together. And that’s the way it was written. We wrote it that way with the verses and the chorus and I love it. I love his voice and my voice together. There are times I can’t even tell whose is whose. I’m not a duet-y kind of artist. I haven’t done many. The ones that I have done, I’ve enjoyed with Bruce, with the few people that I’ve been able to collaborate with like that. But I have not done many at all. So, this was a big step for me, and I just love it. I’m really happy with it.
HP: You can know someone’s really cool, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have chemistry with them. So how did you know Chris was the right person?
Etheridge: I just would listen. I didn’t know him, so I would listen to his music, and his writing spoke to me. But his voice, his understanding of blues, of gospel, of all that. We came from that same well. And I’d heard enough nice things about him that I felt confident that we could probably do something. I at least wanted to try.
HP: As you say, you haven’t done many. But the older you get, the more you loosen up. You want to try different things. One of my favorite quotes from Bruce is talking about the biopic. They asked him why he did the movie now. He goes, because I’m old. I don’t give a fuck anymore.
Etheridge: I can understand. I’m very close to there. We’re so fortunate now we have audiences that will come see and people that are interested in our new music. But we don’t kill ourselves over it anymore and for that I’m very glad.
HP: As you continue to expand these new horizons, who else would you love to do duets with?
Etheridge: Maybe because I was talking about him, I think of Don Henley. I feel like that would be like a really good one. I wonder how he’s doing. I haven’t talked to him forever, but Don Henley would be great. Steven Tyler was always someone that I would always say when people asked me, and I still haven’t been able to do anything, but there’s a possibility I will. I always wanted to work with Neil Diamond. He lost his voice, and I seem to be calling these artists up right as they’re unable to sing anymore. Glenn Campbell, I reached out to him right before he died actually. I would love to sing with Adele. What a great voice. Pretty much anybody who really wants to jump in and do a good song, I would be into it.
HP: I love the opening to “If You Ever Leave Me” because it feels so autobiographical and who knows if it actually was or not. Is it just fun to look back at this point?
Etheridge: Oh, it’s fun. I loved everything I did. And I wouldn’t want to go back and do it because that’s just crazy, but, yeah, it was fun. I actually wrote that song as a joke to my wife. I was laughing and I said, “Honey, I wrote you a song.” And I couldn’t stop laughing. She’s like, “I’m not sure I want to hear this.” Then I sang the first line, “Rips in my shirt, spritz in my mullet.” And we just howled for a while. Then I ended up finishing it going, “I’m going to put this on the record because it’s just fun to play.”
HP: You look at the contrast of that with a song like “More Love,” which is such a beautiful song. They both come from the same place though of nostalgia and learning.
Etheridge: Yeah, I like the album to be well-rounded like that. It did make it hard to do the sequence of the album, what was going to come before and after some songs, because you couldn’t go from a really sad to a funny song. So, I had to really work on that.
HP: We haven’t talked about the tour with Wynonna, who’s amazing. How much
fun is it, going back to the idea of camaraderie, to be out on the road with
someone who’s in a similar place, who’s a great artist, and someone you respect?
Etheridge: I love that in the last handful of years people are finally going, “Oh, it might be good to have two women tour together. Maybe they could sell tickets.” I would have the hardest time before. Sheryl and I used to try to do it, and it was just hard to have people think that two women together on a bill would work. This is the first time I’ve toured with Y, and I’m really looking forward to it because there’s a crossover in that country rock area, and yet our fans are deep on both sides.
