Natalie Merchant

Natalie Anne Merchant was born on October 26, 1963, in Jamestown, New York, the third of four children of Anthony and Anne Merchant. Her paternal grandfather, who played accordion, mandolin, and guitar, had emigrated from Sicily under the surname Mercante before it was anglicized. Her parents divorced when she was seven, and she was raised Roman Catholic, though she began moving away from the faith during her teenage years while retaining a belief in a god. Her mother, who listened to artists including Petula Clark, the Beatles, Al Green, and Aretha Franklin, encouraged her children to study music and restricted television viewing after Merchant turned twelve. Exposure to classical music, show tune soundtracks such as West Side Story and South Pacific, and eventually jazz through her mother's second marriage to a jazz musician shaped Merchant's early musical sensibilities. At sixteen she took a job at a health food store, and after participating in a summer program for disabled children she briefly considered a career in special education.

In 1981, while enrolled at Jamestown Community College, Merchant began singing for a local band called Still Life, which evolved into 10,000 Maniacs. She served as the group's lead vocalist and primary lyricist, contributing to seven studio albums. The band's first recording, Human Conflict Number Five, was made in 1982 at the Hotel Franklin and Group W Westinghouse studios in Jamestown. In addition to singing lead, Merchant later took on piano duties with the group. She departed in 1993, citing insufficient creative control over the music she wrote with the band. Her final recording with 10,000 Maniacs was a cover of "Because the Night" recorded at their MTV Unplugged performance, which reached number eleven on the Hot 100 on February 18, 1994, making it the band's highest-charting single in the United States.

On the day she announced her departure from 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant went home and wrote "I May Know the Word," a song originally intended for the Philadelphia soundtrack. Though cut from that project, it appeared on her debut solo album, Tigerlily, released on the Elektra label in 1995. The album was both a critical and commercial success, producing her first top-ten single in "Carnival" and achieving top-forty placements with "Wonder" and "Jealousy." Tigerlily sold over five million copies and remains her most commercially successful record. Merchant toured extensively in support of the album and made television appearances including performances on Saturday Night Live and at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Her second solo album, Ophelia, followed in 1998, featuring lusher arrangements than the sparse instrumentation of Tigerlily. Merchant recorded it through a workshop process, inviting musicians she had met over the years into her home studio to collaborate. The album's closing reprise featured a symphonic arrangement composed and conducted by British composer Gavin Bryars. The title and title track reference Shakespeare's Ophelia. The lead single, "Kind and Generous," received extensive airplay on VH1, and that summer Sarah McLachlan invited Merchant to co-headline Lilith Fair. The album reached platinum status in under a year, with additional singles "Break Your Heart" and "Life Is Sweet" receiving moderate adult contemporary airplay. Merchant also appeared on PBS's Sessions at West 54th and VH1's Hard Rock Live during this period, and in 1998 recorded George Gershwin's "But Not for Me" for the Red Hot Organization's compilation Red Hot + Rhapsody, which raised funds for AIDS awareness charities.

The Ophelia tour concluded in 1999 with performances recorded on Broadway, which were released as the album Natalie Merchant: Live in Concert along with a companion video. That Broadway engagement represents Merchant's credited Broadway appearance. The performances included covers of songs by David Bowie, Neil Young, and Katell Keineg. Also in 1998, Merchant collaborated with Billy Bragg and Wilco on Mermaid Avenue, an album setting previously unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics to music. She sang lead vocals on "Birds and Ships" and provided backing vocals on "Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key." She returned for the 2000 follow-up, Mermaid Avenue Vol. II, contributing vocals to "I Was Born."

In 2000, Merchant undertook a folk tour across the United States with support from alt-country band Wilco. Her next studio album, Motherland, was released on Elektra in 2001 and represented her most experimental work to that point. It debuted at number thirty on the Billboard 200 and number thirteen on the Top Internet Albums chart, eventually achieving Gold certification. Singles from the album included "Just Can't Last," "Build a Levee," and "Tell Yourself." Merchant subsequently embarked on a year-and-a-half world tour in support of the record, beginning October 17, 2001, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.