30 Days Out Exclusive Interview: Juliana Hatfield

If you have read this blog for any amount of time, you know I have not hidden my affection for talented singer, songwriter and guitarist, Juliana Hatfield. Her album, Become What You Are, remains one of my favorites and, in my opinion, was one of the best albums of the 90s. She recently took part in the Bruce Springsteen’s “Hangin’ Out On E Street” project with an excellent cover of “Cover Me” and she also just put out a new CD, How To Walk Away. Juliana was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions for us about the past, the present and the state of the music industry.

30DAYSOUT: Tell me about how you first got interested in music and who were some of your earliest musical influences..

JH: I took piano lessons from my Mom, in our house, when I was a child. Both of my parents played piano and that was the first music I heard. Live piano music was always in the air. Later I was heavily influenced by 1970’s AM top 40 American radio: the Eagles, ELO, Steely Dan, the Carpenters, Olivia Newton-John, America, Bread, etc.

Friday is Boss’ Day: Indie artists do Bruce

 

Bruce Springsteen has influence a ton of artists throughout his illustrious career. Everyone from R.E.M. to Jesse Malin has sung the Boss’s praises.  Now some cool indie artists are paying their respects by covering his songs for a new project called “Hanging Out On E Street.” We’ll feature some of these artists in the coming weeks so you can see and hear their take on Bruce’s catalog. First up….the great Juliana Hatfield with “Cover Me.”

Juliana Hatfield Official Website

Bruce Springsteen Official Website

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.

MP3: Supermodel

MP3: Spin the Bottle

YouTube: My Sister

Juliana Hatfield Official Website