NATALIE MERCHANT

Born: Jamestown, New York, 26 October 1963

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Tigerlily (1995)

Hit songs since 1990: "Carnival," "Wonder," "Jealousy"

Natalie Merchant began her career as the thoughtful lead singer for the folk-rock band 10,000 Maniacs. The band achieved success with a few albums and eventually broke up. Merchant, who was the primary songwriter for the Maniacs, launched a solo career in the mid-1990s and became even more successful. Her unique voice, uncompromising political opinions, and folk-rock style make for music with a social conscience.

Merchant is the third of four children of Ann and Anthony Merchant. Her mother and father divorced when she was seven, and the young Natalie lived with her mother. Eventually her mother remarried and moved the family to a commune in upstate New York, a lifestyle change that profoundly influenced Merchant psychologically. The women who lived in the commune were strong, capable, and solitary.

In 1981, at the age of seventeen, Merchant joined a local group that became 10,000 Maniacs, and she had much success on the independent, college-rock scene. The group scored several hits, such as the quirky "Like the Weather" and "Hey Jack Kerouac" from their breakthrough album In My Tribe (1988). They released six critically well-received albums and established an active fan base. The fans faithfully followed Merchant when she left the band in the summer of 1993. Merchant confessed that all she wanted to do growing up was leave her hometown and to expand her horizons; because the Maniacs were all from Jamestown, New York, she knew she would have to go solo.

Finding Her Voice

With her passionate, rich alto, Merchant is a songwriter who constantly absorbs the world around her; she interprets issues, people, events, and causes through song. Her self-produced debut album, Tigerlily, appeared in 1995. The album's title refers in part to her love of flowers, and she told Billboard magazine, "I love names that combine two incongruous things. It's a combination of songs which are almost fierce in power lyrically and musically, and others which are really gentle and graceful." Although Tigerlily is contemplative, austere, and somber, there is a light touch in the music; the arrangements and even the vocals are reined in. The first single, "Carnival," is a moody, midtempo contemplation on life: "Have I been blind? / Have I been lost inside myself and my own mind?" "Carnival" peaked at number six on the Billboard Top 40. Tigerlily is so wholly formed, it does not sound like a debut solo album; it is as if Merchant had been collecting the material in her head for years. Merchant dedicated the song "River" to her acquaintance, the promising young film actor River Phoenix, who died of a drug overdose in 1993. The album sold more than 5 million copies and peaked at number thirteen on the Billboard 200 chart.

No Sophomore Slump

After extensive touring both on her own and with Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair in 1998 and 1999, Merchant released Ophelia (1997), which peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200. Her appearances in the Lilith Fair in the summer of 1998 helped spur sales. Ophelia 's first single, "Kind and Generous," is Merchant's love letter to her fans. She wrote following the tremendous success of Tigerlily. She sings, "For everything you do / You know I'm bound / I'd like to thank you for it." The single landed in the Adult Top 40. Ophelia, named for the character in Shakespeare's Hamlet who goes mad and drowns herself, continues in the vein of Tigerlily, but at times with a heavier hand and heart.

In November 2001 Merchant released her third solo effort, Motherland, her most ambitious record to date. She co-produced the album with the well-regarded T-Bone Burnett, who has worked with Elvis Costello and the Wall-flowers, and it is perhaps her most expansive work to date. Arabic influences appear in the opening track "This House Is on Fire," and there is a tango-flamenco hybrid flavor in "The Worst Thing." Though Merchant released the album in the fall of 2001, the lyrics in the title track assumed a new meaning after the terrorist attacks of September 11. She now says it feels like the death of nostalgia and dreams; she sings a plea to be "faceless, nameless, innocent, blameless and free." Motherland, though, is not all worldly melancholy. The positive pop gem, "Just Can't Last," suggests that life's troubles are ultimately fleeting, and that Merchant can still write a song with a light, lilting touch.

Merchant, eccentric and principled, manages to educate, inspire, and imbue her songs with a social and moral awareness. On stage at times she seems like a school-teacher. One of her goals is to inspire people to think a little more.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Tigerlily (Elektra, 1995); Ophelia (Elektra, 1997); Natalie Merchant Live in Concert (Elektra, 1999); Motherland (Elektra, 2001). With 10,000 Maniacs: In My Tribe (Elektra, 1987); Our Time in Eden (Elektra, 1992).

carrie havranek