Wistfulness is a good alternative to self-pity". You can either feel sorry for yourself or get on with it. To all her music - along with anger, humour, sorrow and, in songs such as Set The Prairie on Fire, real sexiness - there's a weary wistfulness. Not to say there aren't any upbeat songs, though Colvin half-jokes that she doesn't write happy tunes.Ĭolvin brings to mind film critic Pauline Kael's description of Marlon Brando - in possession of a tough waifishness. Indeed, the title track is about coming to terms with death, while So Good To See You, about meeting a former lover, is drenched with thrill-tinged regret. Some people skate right by it, but for me, it's something I need to come to terms with." You no longer have your life stretching out before you and realising you've lived more than you're going to live is a shake-up. "The mood is somewhat resigned, somewhat content. Leaving aside his use of the word "lady", that's some compliment.Īnd so to These Four Walls, her newest album, one she describes as "a coming-of-age record". The legendary David Crosby calls her "the best lady songwriter in the world right now". In America, where they are fetishistic about categorisation, she's been described as "skating the line between adult contemporary and modern folk" (a description that prompted a bemused snort from Colvin herself) but, simply, she sings great grown-up pop songs. And yet, she never fully crossed into the mainstream, remaining more of a cult favourite, a hidden gem, a diamond in the rough.
She's appeared in The Simpsons, in which she voiced Rachel Jordan, the Christian rock star who dated Ned Flanders after Maude's death. Another song from the album became the theme tune of the short-lived Brooke Shields sitcom, Suddenly Susan, and she recorded songs for film soundtracks, among them Julia Roberts' Runaway Bride. If Colvin had a breakthrough, A Few Small Repairs, the album containing Sunny Came Home, was it. "For the record, I've never set fire to my house or murdered anyone," she says, impishly. A feisty murder ballad, Sunny Came Home, is about a woman, betrayed and belittled by her husband, who returns home and sets fire to her house. Given her tendency and talent for writing personal songs, it's ironic that Colvin is best known for a song that isn't about her at all. Leventhal's fingerprints are visible on most of Colvin's nine albums and it was with him she achieved her most commercial success with Sunny Came Home, which won song of the year and record of the year at the 1998 Grammys. She learnt to play guitar at 10 and moved to New York in her early 20s where, after playing in various bands, she met John Leventhal, the producer and writer with whom she's maintained a creative partnership for 25 years. Music played a huge part in keeping her together. "Sometimes, I still just want to take the edge off." It was so nice to take the edge off."Įven today, some 24 years after she stopped drinking, she struggles with it. And if you're that anxious for that long, it takes a lot of energy to deal with it. I don't think anyone escapes into addiction because they feel good about themselves and the world is bothering them. "I didn't drink until then because I was frightened of losing control, but when I started, when I was 19, that was it.
Who sings sunny came home how to#
In Tuff Kid, she sings "My daddy hit me but he couldn't quit me/ We showed each other how to feel alive", while in The Story, she sings of her parents, "And he never did guess/ in her cast-iron dress/ she was burning beyond recognition".Īfter a difficult childhood, Colvin went to college and it was there she started drinking. Essentially, they tried to break my spirit, which wasn't an uncommon way to bring up a kid in those days." "They weren't prepared for a kid like me. Her parents, who married young, were the product of their time. (Even when she was diagnosed and medicated, in the 1970s, drugs then had dreadful side-effects). Growing up in the 1950s and 60s in the American midwest meant her condition went unrecognised.
"I believe in a biological predisposition towards it, and I suffered terrible anxiety and panic and sensitivity." "Looking back, I see I've had a form of depression from when I was around five years old," she says. So, on top of the usual broken hearts and shattered love affairs that singer-songwriters perennially plumb, she also deals with her alcoholism and depression.
Citing Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Jackson Browne as influences, Colvin sings about herself. She writes intimate, confessional songs, in what she describes as a "folk idiom that has evolved from old folk music, through Bob Dylan, to personal folk music".
The damage of which she sings is, mostly, her own.
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