Natalie Merchant: âSo Uncool that Youâre Really Coolâ
- Former Maniac profiled on Lehigh Valley PBS program âArticulateâ
Natalie Merchant was in CBGBs being shunned by the safety-pin-pierced cool kids when a woman who worked for a record company gave the nascent singer the boost she needed.
âShe came up to me and she said, âYou are so uncool, that youâre really cool,ââ Merchant recalled. âJust remember that.â
The singer and activist is speaking to host Jim Cotter on âArticulate,â in an episode titled âThe Many Lives of Natalie Merchant.â
Though she possesses one of the most distinctive voices of her generation, Merchant says that, technically speaking, âI donât think I have a very good voice.
âBecause to me, itâs more about (the) emotional, you know, immediacy,â she says.
Across 26 minutes, the Lehigh Valley PBS station follows Merchant from her youth in rural New York to her days with 10,000 Maniacs - âa horrible name,â she says - to her solo career and her life as activist and mother. The episode was filmed as Merchantâs daughter, Lucia, was preparing to go off to college.
âIâm not worried because I know that weâll be close forever,â Merchant says.
Merchant left the Maniacs at 30 - she joined at 16 - because as lyricist, she was also the groupâs âeditor.â If she couldnât find words to fit a bandmateâs music, the song didnât make it.
âI didnât like having that position in the band,â she said.
So it was on to a solo career - a huge hit with Tigerlily, whose âWonderâ got her involved with special-needs children - and other activism that resulted in a fracking ban in her home state of New York. Other people got the ball rolling, but music can be essential in closing the deal on such efforts, Merchant said.
âYou can bombard people with information, but ⊠thereâs something about music that kind of opens up that channel to the heart.â
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