Lost Classics! “Become What You Are,” Juliana Hatfield Three
When a sexy female singer utters the line “the highest grade piece of ass” right out of the box you know the CD is going to be good. “Supermodel,” a tune that makes fun of all of us men for ogling “perfect” women in magazines, kicked off Become What You Are.
Singer/songwriter/guitarist Juliana Hatfield grew up in Boston listening to punk bands like X, but also had a jones for Olivia Newton-John and The Police. She earned a songwriting degree from the prestigious Berklee School of Music, and made it perfectly clear in all of her interviews and even on the inside of her CDs that she was the guitarist, not some guy.
Her 1992 album, Hey Babe, was one of the top independent selling discs of the year, and for her next disc she recruited a rhythm section and called the band the Juliana Hatfield Three. The result was Become What You Are, a disc filled with cool guitar licks and even catchier melodies.
The aforementioned track, “Supermodel,” has great lyrics like “five thousand dollars a day is what they pay my baby for her pretty face.” The first single, My Sister, as told from the point of view of a little brother, was her biggest hit, and “Spin the Bottle,” a nasty little ditty on the old game, was featured in the movie Reality Bites. The disc, produced by Scott Litt (REM), rocks from start to finish and is one of the forgotten masterpieces of the brief alternative era of the early 1990s.
After Become What You Are, Hatfield was signed to a major label, but her record company did what most record companies do to successful indie artists….they change them, and most of the time not for the better. Her next release, Only Everything, didn’t have the same feel and I kind of lost track of what she was doing after that. However, if you are looking for a collection of tunes that you won’t soon forget, Become What You Are by the Juliana Hatfield Three, will more than do the trick.
30 Days Out 
September 6, 2011 at 6:58 am
Check out a podcast review of Become What You Are by The Juliana Hatfield Three on Dig Me Out at digmeoutpodcast.com, a weekly podcast dedicated to uncovering and rediscovering lost, forgotten and overlooked rock of the 90s.