“It just horrified me”: Melissa Etheridge recalls the thing that pushed her to come out publicly

I started thinking, gosh, you know, it’s getting a little uncomfortable because my music was so personal.

It was very interrelational music — songs about, you know, passion and desire and heartbreak, and, and so the questions that interviewers would give me were more detailed.

And I was always very, very careful to just say ‘they,’ ‘them,’ ‘you’ [when referring to a partner], and even my music was very genderless.

It was the first time I was on the cover of something, and I opened it and read it, and everything … [the reporter] changed it to ‘my boyfriend.’

Underground, people knew I was a lesbian, and it just horrified me. I said, ‘People are gonna think I’m lying and I’m trying to cover up. And it just, it horrified me. So I was like, ‘No, no, no. I need to come out.’Lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge speaking to iHeartRadio’s Elton John Impact Awards podcast about why she decided to come out publicly in 1993.