Interview With Michelle Branch, The Golden Girl of Alt-Pop

photos /  JASON DUNN

styling /JENNA CLIFFORD

makeup / MEG BOES    

hair / LARA HEIST

photo assistant / COLE SWEETON

story / ERICA RUSSELL

In the early 2000s Michelle Branch was, quite literally, “Everywhere”—performing on MTV, collaborating with Santana and inspiring little girls around the world to pick up a guitar and learn how to rock out. She was the golden girl of alt-pop when her debut album, The Spirit Room, was released in 2001, and her rebellious chart-topping streak continued when she dropped her follow up, Hotel Paper, in 2003, spawning another hit with “Are You Happy Now?” But just as her meteoric rise breached new heights alongside fellow anti-bubblegum acts like Avril Lavigne and Vanessa Carlton, she took a step back to get some air—record label frustrations will do that to an artist—and decided to focus on her band The Wreckers for a while.

Stepping back onto the stage as that Michelle Branch, though—former teen pop star, now indie rock goddess and #womancrush forever—is no small feat after fading into pop’s nostalgia stockroom during the fourteen years since her last full length studio release. But following a handful of discarded albums, a stint performing bluesy country tunes, an entirely understandable bout of music industry fatigue, plus one big ol’ divorce, the singer-songwriter-musician has more to say now than ever before. And she speaks her truth out loud (real loud!) on her new record, Hopeless Romantic. 

Recorded with Branch’s musical partner and beau Patrick Carney of The Black Keys fame over the span of a year or so, the songwriter’s latest record, released April 7, marks her most personal and raw yet, a collection of hazy, relaxed dream-rock bops chronicling the dissolution of a marriage as well as the beginnings of a new chapter in a woman’s life. “Originally, the record was supposed to be eleven songs but I made it into a fourteen song album because I wanted there to be as much music as possible on this release,” Branch explains, quickly adding, “Because it’s been that long of a wait!”

Truly, the wait was worth it: Serendipity struck when Branch randomly ran into Carney, her dream collaborator, at a Grammys party in 2015. As she tells it, her former label had been pushing her to work with another Black Keys member before that, and it just wasn’t working out. “When I was still on Warner Brothers, I was like, ‘I want to work with The Black Keys, and I know Patrick produces.’ And everyone was like, ‘Oh, Dan [Auerbach] produces, Dan produces!’ And I said, ‘No… Patrick produces!’ I wanted to work with Pat so bad, but music was sent to Dan instead. So it just never happened.”

Luckily, the pair eventually linked up to create something unexpected. The chilled-out indie production of Hopeless Romantic is a far stretch from the glistening, radio-friendly pop rock of the early aughts, but Branch isn’t too concerned about what people have to say about her credibility as an artist in 2017. And why should she? “This record is for [the fans] and if I find new fans along the way, or if some of Patrick’s friends are like, ‘Oh, that girl Michelle Branch?’ And they want to hear it, and end up liking it? Then that’s great,” she explains casually over a glass of wine. “I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

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Don’t let the album’s wistful title fool you, though: Hopeless Romantic packs a punch with a series of fed up fuck-you anthems, like “Best You Ever.” When I mention that the single makes me want to send a rage-filled letter to my dumb ex-boyfriend, Branch laughs and concurs with my sentiment. “Good, because I felt that way when I was writing it,” she tells me. “Amy Kuney, who was one of the co-writers on this, she was going through a breakup at the same time. She had the idea of a letter and it was because she was literally writing out a letter. Dear lover: one day, you’re going to regret this decision.”

Thankfully, Branch doesn’t have many regrets when it comes to her unusual, sometimes tumultuous career in music… or her failed marriage, for that matter. Instead, her struggles seem to have made her stronger, sharper and wiser. Much like how The Spirit Room and Hotel Paper helped to shape and empower a generation of teen girls, the songwriter still finds herself dishing out sage advice to her fellow women, including her own sister.

“My sister just turned thirty two weeks ago and she was like, ‘Michelle, I’m having a midlife crisis.’ I was like, no, everyone feels that way,” the singer says empathetically, taking a pause before adding, “You feel it’s supposed to be figured out by now and I think everyone puts on a brave face but no one really has it figured out. Maybe that’s the secret of life. Maybe we just don’t have it figured out yet.”

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