by: Jennifer Bowles, Associated Press, (section: Entertainment page: E2)

Natalie Merchant makes no apologies for injecting her concerts with a little social consciousness.

During a stop at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, the pop singer let the audience know that on their way out they could donate money or items at a table set up to benefit a local battered women's shelter. "I always make the assumption that if people like my records there's a certain level of sensitivity and tolerance for some serious subject matter seeping into the music," she says.

Merchant is part of a well-known cadre of singers, including friends Michael Stipe and Peter Gabriel, who are socially and politically active. The three recently appeared on "VH1 Honors," a concert that benefited the Witness program, which provides groups around the world with video cameras to document human rights violations.

"I just think it's my responsibility as a citizen," she says of her activism. "I don't like to point fingers at other artists, because a lot of artists all they're devoted to is making people feel good. That's an admirable aim in life to make people feel good."

Among Merchant's top causes are animal rights, domestic violence, and homelessness.

Merchant, 32, turned to her activism after her breakup with 10,000 Maniacs, the band she had fronted since she was 17.

The decision to leave came shortly before she turned 30, an age in which "you want to assess your life and decide 'am I achieving what I would like to at this point in my life?' I didn't think I was." [note from your @Natalie webmaster: this is wrong. Natalie decided to leave 10,000 Maniacs in 1991 when she was 28. she left the band in 1993, two months shy of her 30th birthday.]

She says the final months of touring with the band felt more like a contractual obligation than enjoyment of her work.

To rejuvenate and refocus, Merchant took six months off, lived in Manhattan, and spent two to three days a week volunteering at a homeless shelter on the edge of Harlem. [note from your @Natalie webmaster: this is wrong. Natalie lived in Manhattan and worked in a homeless shelter in Harlem in 1990-91, after the Blind Man's Zoo tour and before 10,000 Maniacs made Our Time in Eden. ]

"There were plenty of times I had to remove dead rats or knives or crack from the playground. It was just New York. It wasn't a pleasant place for children," she says. "But when you played music for them, this calm and peace would come over the room."

That inspired the singer-songwriter to sit back down at her piano and churn out her first solo album, Tigerlily. Released last year, it has produced three hits: Carnival, Jealousy, and Wonder. Another single, San Andreas Fault, will be released at the end of August, she says.

The song that Merchant is most proud of is Wonder, an uplifting tune inspired by a woman who had a productive life despite her severely disabled body.

Wonder sort of sums up what I want to do for people - to feel a sense of amazement about something that we would consider the most mundane things of life, but they're not mundane at all, and to celebrate so many aspects of our lives we take for granted," she says.

"Just the fact that we exist. It's amazing that we can walk and talk and exchange ideas, that we have a language.