Melissa Etheridge One Way Out Vinyl LP Ruby Red Colour 2022

1. One Way Out
2. As Cool As You Try
3. I'm No Angel Myself
4. For The Last Time
5. Save Myself
6. That Would Be Me
7. Wild Wild Wild
8. You Have No Idea (Live)
9. Life Goes On (Live)

The core of the album is seven songs she wrote in the late 1980s and early ‘90s —“One Way Out,” “As Cool As You Try,” “I’m No Angel Myself,” “For the Last Time,” “Save Myself,” “That Would Be Me” and. “Wild Wild Wild.” Rounding out the set are two other previously unreleased songs, “You Have No Idea” and “Life Goes On,” recorded at an intimate and boisterous 2002 concert at the Roxy in West Hollywood. These songs bristle with energy and emotion, a rock ’n’ roll edge and personal depth as sharp as anything in her canon.

The first seven come from a time in which she was finding her first measures of fame with bolstered confidence and ambition. But it was also before she was ready to be fully open about herself. These songs show her finding her voice, but when it came to it she wasn’t ready yet to say it in public. “It was an emotional space, a tender sort of place that I was reluctant to go to before I came out,” she says. “So yeah, I did hold back on that sort of thing. And now it was really fun to just step forward and fearlessly present these songs and play them. You know, really being set free.”