MICHELLE BRANCH
Hopeless Romantic
One day in 2012, Michelle Branch wrote a song called “City” that would turn out
to be eerily prescient. “I was nearing my 30th birthday and I thought, ‘Something
needs to change in my life,’ she says. “I felt stagnant in this weird holding pattern,
but I never acknowledged it to myself until I wrote that song. A lot of huge things
happened to me really young. I got signed at 17 and released my first album a
month after I turned 18. I met my ex-husband when I was 19, got married at 20,
and had a baby at 21. ‘City’ was a song about me realizing that I wanted to make
a change. It was one of the first things I wrote that felt really honest and it was
kind of an ‘A-ha’ moment for me. Once I sang it, I thought, ‘Oh, here we go.’”
“City” is now the closing track on Branch’s upcoming new album Hopeless
Romantic, and Branch’s world has completely changed since she wrote it. The
Sedona, Arizona-born singer, songwriter, and musician went through a divorce,
changed record labels, moved from Los Angeles to Nashville, fell in love, and, in
the process, made the album of her dreams with her producer and now partner,
Patrick Carney of The Black Keys.
Not surprisingly, Hopeless Romantic is filled with songs about relationships.
“They’re my favorite topic,” she says. “I love hearing human stories about people
interacting with each other, and the title perfectly sums up the record. A lot of
these songs are about heartbreak, but knowing that it doesn’t mean the end of
the world, it just means letting go and moving on and knowing that you’re going
to find something better, as hard as that is.” Branch also notes that Hopeless
Romantic is her first truly autobiographical record. “My first album certainly was
written without much real-life experience,” she says. “But this album is about
adult, messy love and not teenage love. It’s been a couple of really interesting
years. I mean, the last time I dated I was a teenager!”
Branch was 17 when she signed with Maverick Records. The label had heard her
independently released album Broken Bracelet and was impressed by her
obvious songwriting talent, powerful vocal delivery, and precocious guitar chops
at a time when many young female artists were singing other people’s songs. In
2001, Branch released The Spirit Room, which sold two million copies in the U.S.,
thanks to the catchy, heartfelt hits “Everywhere” and “All You Wanted,” and
ushered in a new era of young women writing and performing their own songs.
She followed it up with 2003’s Hotel Paper, which debuted at No. 2 on the
Billboard album chart and became Branch’s second platinum-selling disc in the
U.S. It spawned the hit single “Are You Happy Now?”, which was nominated for a
Grammy Award for “Best Female Rock Performance.” Branch also won a
Grammy for singing on Carlos Santana’s “The Game of Love,” which reached No.
5 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and spent many weeks atop the Billboard Adult
Contemporary chart. In 2006, Branch found success with modern-country duo
The Wreckers, whose debut Stand Still, Look Pretty was praised by critics for
breaking down barriers between pop and country. The gold-certified album
spawned the hit single “Leave the Pieces,” which topped the Hot Country Songs
chart for several weeks, as well as “My Oh My” and “Tennessee,” and earned
Branch her fourth Grammy nomination. (She was also nominated for Best New
Artist in 2003.)
“It all seems like it was another lifetime,” Branch says of her heady career. “But
I’m 33 now and I look back at everything that I’ve already accomplished and it’s
kind of a relief, to be honest. Like, ‘Okay, I did that. I got that out of the way.’”
Though the last collection she released was the six-track EP Everything Comes
and Goes in 2010, Branch never stopped writing songs (including several with
her friend Amy Kuney, many of which appear on Hopeless Romantic). In
February 2015, Branch ran into Patrick Carney at a Grammy party and a long
conversation about her music ensued. “He said, ‘You haven’t put out any music
in a long time, what’s going on? I’ve always loved your voice,’” she recalls.
Branch sent him some demos and the two began sketching out a sonic vision of
what a potential album could sound like. “I said, ‘I play guitar, I write my own
music. It’s not that complicated. I want to get in with a band and make something
I can get on stage and play. I don’t want to be doing all this on a computer.’
Patrick understood that immediately. I think it really became a cause for him, like,
‘We’re going to figure this out and I’m going to help you.’”
In June 2015, Branch signed with Verve Records and she and Carney recruited
musician Gus Seyffert, who has played with The Black Keys and Beck, to play
bass and other instruments. They holed up at Seyffert’s home studio in the Silver
Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. “The three of us took turns playing
everything,” Branch says. “The first day we worked on a song called ‘Carry Me
Home’ and Patrick handed me a guitar and said, ‘Here, you play it,’ and I said,
‘No, it’s okay. You play it.’ And he was like, ‘No, Michelle. I think you’re used to
everyone in the past playing the guitar for you or not giving you the chance to
actually do it yourself. This is your record, you know how it’s supposed to be
played. Play the guitar.’ I remember skipping out of the studio that first day elated
that I had found the two people who were going to have my back making this
record.”
The result is a confident, high-spirited rock album that Branch says is the first
one she’s made that sounds like music she actually listens to. “I told Patrick how
much I love Beach House and Jenny Lewis and he said, ‘No one would ever
know that you listen to indie-rock or that you have this knowledge of rock music,
but you do and you’re passionate about it. Why aren’t you making a record that
sounds like that?’”
The album’s sonics serve the sentiments of these relationship-oriented songs.
“Fault Line” is about wanting a relationship to work but knowing it’s past the point
of being fixed, while “Best You Ever” gave Branch the last word on a past
relationship. “It felt good to say, ‘You don’t realize how good you have it. One day
you’re going to look back realize that.’ I think a lot of people feel that way after a
break-up,” she says. “’Heartbreak Now’ is an ‘I know you’re not good for me, but I
can’t stop thinking about you,’ song,” Branch says. “I wanted it to sound
completely obsessive.”
During the course of making Hopeless Romantic, Branch and Carney realized
that their feelings for each other went beyond friendship. The song “Carry Me
Home” will always remind her of the first days in the studio when, without
realizing what was happening, she had set in motion a sequence of events that
would change everything. “I remember saying to my sister, ‘I’ve met someone
who’s going to be so important in my life. I don’t know if it’s a mentor thing or if
it’s just purely a music thing, but I have never connected with somebody in that
way,’ she recalls. “I truly believe everything happens for a reason. I made a
record I’m enormously proud of and, in the process, found the love of my life, and
it just feels like it was supposed to happen.”
###