Michelle Branch brings new sound to Houston
It’s been 14 years since Michelle Branch headlined a Houston concert. And as she prepares to take the stage at Heights Theater on Saturday, Branch knows what you’re thinking: “Where has she been?” She gets that a lot. Branch skyrocketed to teenage fame in the early 2000s, thanks to her every-girl popradio anthems like “Everywhere” and “Breathe.” At a time when most of the other femaleled teen acts on MTV’s “Total Request Live” were performing songs written by someone else, Branch earned acclaim — and fans — for her role as both singer and songwriter.
Her first album, which she released a month after turning 18, went doubleplatinum. Her second was certified platinum, and she snatched her first Grammy, for a duet with Carlos Santana (“The Game of Love”), before she was old enough to buy a beer.
And then came the crickets.
“It hasn’t been an easy, point-A to point-B story,” says Branch, now 33 and divorced with a 12-yearold daughter. In the years since her last solo album (“Hotel Paper” in 2003), she’s tried to put out others. “But every solo album I tried to do, the record label — something would happen.”
The head of the label would be fired or leave. They’d decide they’d rather hear Branch — known for optimistic guitar strumming and heartfelt lyrics — to sound a little more like Katy Perry, or collaborate with an electronic music artist.
It was enough to make her physically sick, and she spent years begging to be let out of her contract. When that didn’t work, she spent some time in the country rock act The Wreckers, with Jessica Harp.
Finally, in June 2014, she was set free by the record label.
“It was such a strange place for me to be in,” she says of that time. “Couple this with the fact that I was newly divorced out of a 10-year marriage, so everything in my life was like a snow globe turned upside down. I didn’t know where I stood, but the beauty of it all was that, suddenly, no one knew what to expect from me. And I found a tremendous amount of creative freedom in that.”
She also had something to say.
“My first album was teenage, make-believe love. It was my idea of what a relationship was. And I had schoolgirl crushes, but I didn’t have real-life experiences to add to it,” she says.
“A lot of the second album was more grownup, but I wrote a lot of that album when I wasn’t even drinking age,” Branch continues. “I now have dated and been broken up with and been single in my 30s, and I think that’s what really makes me want to write this album.”
The title of her new album, released in April, sounds like the perfect follow-up to the songs that made her famous: “Hopeless Romantic.” But years of experience have created layers and dimension in her lyrics, which weren’t there in her earlier hits.
“I hope my definition of love has matured,” she says. “I’m very much a romantic, and I do believe in love and I’m not jaded yet. Hopefully I’m not that cynical. But I do think this album is a more realistic approach to relationships.”
Don’t get her wrong. Branch is not knocking her early stuff. She wants fans to know that she’ll play plenty of her hits on tour this summer. She knows many of the fans who listened to her in their teens haven’t heard her new stuff. But she also hopes they’ll give it a try.
“I think the unique thing — and the kind of lucky thing — for me is that a lot of people who listen to my music are the same age as me,” she says. “We’ve all grown up together and gone through the same thing and feel the same.”
The 16-year-olds, who belted along the feel-good chorus of “Everywhere” while riding in their mom’s minivan, are now 30-year-olds likely to see things from Branch’s point of view in songs like “Not a Love Song,” in which she tells a former lover, “You’re not even enough for a love song. You’re just somebody that I wasted my youth on.”
And really, the new album isn’t that different from her older stuff.
“It’s definitely not a reinvention,” she says. “I write the songs the same way I always have: They start on piano, with an acoustic guitar. The change was in the production. I didn’t want this album to be as polished and slick as my last albums … I wanted this to sound dirty and feel like a rock album.”
There’s a grittier edge to her music now. But that makes perfect sense to her as a 30-something who has found that life has grittier edges than the daydreams she wrote about in her teens.