Merchant, former lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs, says she's been trying to get away from the image many people have of her as the Emily Dickinson of rock
[webmaster's note: this is a transcript of the radio program All Things Considered from National Public Radio]
Daniel Zwerdling: If the public listens to what critics are saying about Natalie Merchant's new album, they'll hear mainly applause, and words like "exquisite," "mysterious," "a theatrical tour de force." The album is called Ophelia.
The question is, who is the real Natalie Merchant? Until five years ago, her fans knew her as the lead singer and heart of the hit band 10,000 Maniacs. She gave the band a poetic, political edge.
Then she went solo.
And now in the photographs that accompany her new album, Merchant appears in a variety of incarnations. Natalie Merchant dressed as a nun. Merchant as a sleezy seductress, draped in pink fur. Merchant as a human cannon-ball in a circus, wearing a red-and-blue cape.
Merchant: I consciously wanted to play with my image, because I've -- I sort of have gained over the years the reputation of being the Emily Dickinson of pop music.
Zwerdling: And being the Emily Dickinson of rock music, that suggests what to you that you wanted to branch away from?
Merchant: Well, I think it was just kind of limiting. I mean, when people see me dressed as the Mafia courtesan, which is a part of me -- I mean, I was raised in a Sicilian family, and I definitely had relatives who I modelled that character after...
Zwerdling: You really have relatives who like -- who have the superbright red lipstick and dress in pink boa furs with cigarettes dangling from their mouths?
(laughter)
Merchant: When I was younger, there were definitely some people in the family, near to the family, that were very flamboyant dressers, and heavy drinkers, for sure. You're making me psychoanalyze my package.
(laughter)
Zwerdling: OK. But in any case, it's fun to sort of let loose and now be a trampy seductress and a cannon-ball in a circus?
(laughter)
Merchant: Well, they're all just symbols of different aspects of my character, or anyone's character. I really tried to pick people that would symbolize all different facets of being a woman.
Zwerdling: You know, if we had listened to your songs ten years ago, when you were with 10,000 Maniacs, we would have heard you singing a lot of songs with a social, political edge, right? One song you used to sing was about a poor mother who couldn't afford to feed her children. That was Dust Bowl.
Merchant: Right.
Zwerdling: There was a song about a racist who burns down a dance hall after he sees a biracial couple dancing there, which was called -- what was that one?
Merchant: (Unintelligible)
Zwerdling: Jubilee
Merchant: Jubilee. Right. It's been a while.
(laughter)
Zwerdling: There -- the song about the son of a Vietnam veteran coming to terms with his father, in The Big Parade. But...
Merchant: Big Parade.
Zwerdling: But your new songs, in this album, seem a lot less political, and much more introspective.
Merchant: Well, I've been working over -- the last Maniacs and the last two records of my own, I've been working further away from overt political writing, and more trying to get at people's emotions and trying to get them to look at themselves and look at the way that we interact with each other, and I guess I'm looking more at society through the individual...
Zwerdling: And why...?
Merchant: And...
Zwerdling: ... though? Were you feeling frustrated, that you were feeling sort of going for big political change just wasn't...?
Merchant: Well, I'll tell you, the truth is, the Gulf War crushed me, and I thought, how could I in a -- in the face of all of the carnage of the war, and the continuing carnage -- you know, people are still dying in Iraq because of the sanctions, especially children, because of the lack of medical supplies, and I just started to feel that how could I write in a three-and-a-half-minute or four-minute pop song anything that would describe how I was feeling about what was happening.
Zwerdling: So somehow you felt so overwhelmed by the Gulf War and by the, you know, big political events in the world...
Merchant: Right.
Zwerdling: ... you felt like the only way to sort of deal with it was to go inward and talk about you know your emotional struggles, the ones that your friends, your neighbors...?
Merchant: I didn't want to trivialize it, as it was difficult for me to write about it. And I think what I tried to look at was the constructs that were responsible for that happening, which were just power. I started to look at the imbalance of power in the world, and the imbalance of power in my more immediate surroundings.
Like on my new album, there's a song called The Living, and I wrote the song about a man who lives on my street in my -- the town where I live, who's an alcoholic, and he's elderly, and he lives in a group home, and I've been giving him rides for six years, back and forth to town, because he obviously has no money, has no car.
Zwerdling: Hmmm!
Merchant: And in the conversations I've had with him, he was a pretty established and talented trumpet-player in the '30s. He played with Count Bassie, and was actually fired from the job because of drinking. And his whole life has been this series of failures, and they're all connected to his illness, his alcoholism.
I'm trying to write songs that address universal sentiments and people, and everyone knows what it's like to feel a disappointment to themselves or to others, or to feel they've made some bad decisions in their lives.
Zwerdling: Listening to some of these songs on the new album, you come across -- I mean, not you, but the words come across, in many cases, as sort of -- maybe the word is "needy," "plaintive." I'm thinking, for instance, of the song My Skin, where you sing, "I've been treated so wrong, as if I'm becoming untouchable. I'm a slow-dying flower, and the sweet turning sour, and untouchable."
Merchant: Right.
My Skin was actually written, was inspired by a friend of mine who had written a screenplay about a woman who was dying of cancer, and her husband could only see her as a victim of a disease, and he couldn't really see her as the woman he loved, and was attracted to, any more. And in the screenplay, she's just desperate for him to make love to her one more time before she dies, so she can feel like a woman again.
And so probably this song, since that was the inspiration of this song, is pretty tragic, and I forget sometimes that people won't know that that's the inspiration, that it's not necessarily about my life.
Zwerdling: Oh, quite a remarkable topic, though, for a rock song.
Merchant: I try to think of myself as a songwriter, and not really limit myself to you know what's traditionally considered material for rock songs. Otherwise, I wouldn't have written songs about illiteracy and war memorials.
(laughter)
Zwerdling: Well, could you check up on the Natalie Merchant of 1998 and see how else you have been changing, now that you are getting further and further away from the band 10,000 Maniacs? Are you still whirling about the stage like a dervish when you sing? People used to talk about that a lot, how you would whirl around during your songs, and I'm wondering, can you still whirl, especially when you're such sort of slow and pensive numbers like on this new album?
(laughter)
Merchant: No, I'm not much of a dervish any more. I think that my dancing has changed quite a bit since I first started.
Zwerdling: Hmmm! So how...?
Merchant: I think I've liberated my hips, which is something for the Emily Dickinson of pop to do. It kind of shocks people that I have such liberated hips.
Zwerdling: So your hips wiggle more on stage now than they used to...?
Merchant: Well, I've taken a lot of Afro-Cuban dance classes, and I listen to a lot of African pop music. I love African pop music. And it's really influenced the way that I move. More fluid, more sensual.
Zwerdling: And obviously, judging by the last number on this album, When They Ring the Golden Bells, which is an old spiritual, obviously you're still singing about religion, because years ago you said that your home was filled with images of Jesus and Mary. And I'm wondering whether your home is still filled with those images.
Merchant: The reason I had so many icons at home was I was raised Roman Catholic, and my grandmother, when she passed away, I inherited all of the trappings. But I love folk music. I mean, that's the reason I recorded When They Ring the Golden Bells. I know that it is used as a funeral song in the Deep South, but I've just always loved that song. I learned it off an old Alfred G. Karnes record that was recorded in about 1925.
Zwerdling: And on the album, it's really a -- it's a very uplifting end to the album.
Merchant: It sort of has the feeling of a recessional to me. Do you go to church? Have you been to church?
Zwerdling: Yes, I have.
Merchant: OK. Then you know the feeling of the recessional. Maybe I always felt it was so -- loved the recessional because that meant we could go home. (laughter) But I love the feeling of everyone singing a song and then leaving together, and then you carry the feeling of that song out of the church with you, and that's sort of what I felt about this version of this song, of the spiritual.
Zwerdling: Well, listen, Natalie Merchant, it's been a pleasure talking to you, and I know that -- I know that you speak a number of different languages, right?
Merchant: Italian is my main second language.
Zwerdling: So just say something to us and our listeners in Italian to send us off. It's such a romantic-sounding language.
(laughter)
SOUNDBITE OF MERCHANT SPEAKING IN ITALIAN
(laughter)
Zwerdling: And what did you say to us?
Merchant: I said I don't care what the critics say, I write from my heart.
Zwerdling: Have a great weekend.
Merchant: OK. Ciao.
Zwerdling: Natalie Merchant has been speaking to us from member station WGUC in Cincinnati. Her new album is called Ophelia.