Besides her award-winning, crowd-pleasing, and critically acclaimed rock music career, crooner Melissa Etheridge is also renowned for coming out of the closet as a happy and active lesbian, and for her relatively recent diagnosis and subsequent battle with breast cancer.
Etheridge was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, on May 29, 1961, and has an Academy Award for Best Original Song, "I Need to Wake Up," for the 2006, Al Gore-presented documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and two Grammy Awards—both for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1992, "Ain’t It Heavy," and in 1994, "Come to My Window"—under her belt.
Etheridge, a self-professed Bruce Springsteen and Dave Matthews Band fan, has released nine full-length albums throughout her music career, starting with Melissa Etheridge in 1988, which went multi-platinum, and so far ending with Greatest Hits: The Road Less Traveled in 2005.
The rocker enjoyed the most commercial success earlier in her career, as her two other albums that went multi-platinum were 1993’s Yes I Am and 1995’s Your Little Secret. Her other albums are Brave and Crazy in 1989, Never Enough in 1992, Breakdown in 1999, Skin in 2001, and Lucky in 2004.
According to sources, Etheridge has accumulated about 27 million record sales and is around the #125 top-selling artist of all time.
Etheridge is also known for her much-publicized battle with breast cancer, of which she was officially diagnosed in 2004, after which she underwent chemotherapy, leaving her bald, and temporarily taking her out of the music scene. However, she made quite a comeback in a touching tribute to the late legendary rock star Janis Joplin with "Piece of My Heart" at the 2005 Grammys. Later that year, Etheridge participated and performed in a telethon for Hurricane Katrina victims, and also performed her new song "I Run For Life"—about her personal battle with cancer—on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show.
In addition to her musical success and breast cancer battle, Etheridge is quite well-known as an outspoken lesbian and gay-rights activist. She first came out in early 1993 at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration.
With respect to her personal relationships, Etheridge was first involved with Julie Cypher, who had two children for the couple, through sperm donor David Crosby. Etheridge and Cypher separated in 2000 after Cypher reportedly reconsidered her sexuality, and after an alleged affair she had with Canadian lesbian singer-songwriter k d lang.
In 2003, Etheridge hooked up with actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, who gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, on October 17, 2006, through an anonymous sperm donor.
YUDDY
