Michelle Branch announces new album & tour, shares protest song & video, "I'm A Man"
Michelle Branch will follow her 2017 comeback album Hopeless Romantic with a new LP, The Trouble With Fever, on September 16 via Audio Eagle/Nonesuch/Warner (pre-order). Like Hopeless Romantic, it was co-produced with The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney (her husband), and Michelle says, “The album began during the 2020 lockdown, while Patrick and I were here at home in Nashville. I didn’t realize I was making a record at first—it was more just for our own sanity, getting time together to play music and screw around in the studio.”
The first single is “I’m A Man,” a militant, bluesy protest song that tackles women’s rights, toxic masculinity, reproductive rights, sexual harassment, and more. Michelle says:
I wrote the chorus of “I’m A Man” long before the verses. It started as an empathetic view towards men struggling to find a new way to navigate in a post- “Me Too” world of toxic masculinity.
Having a son made me think of how men are taught to be from a young age and the pressures to provide and succeed and this sort of burden to be seen as macho. But you can’t tell that story with just one side of the coin because as I was trying to paint a sympathetic view it just seemed completely minuscule and ridiculous in comparison to the struggles that women have been dealing with, really, since Eve bit the apple.
Why are nearly all mass shooters male? Why do I need my husband’s written permission in 2022 to get my tubes tied? Why do American women have fewer reproductive rights than our grandmothers? Why don’t we get paid as much as men? Why do I have to teach my daughters not to walk alone at night? And so on and so on. Yet we carry on with grit and grace like we always have because we have no other choice.
The song comes with a video featuring archival protest footage, and you can watch that below.
Michelle has also announced a tour, kicking off at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl on September 12 and ending with a two-night stand at the Troubadour in LA later that month. In between, she’s playing Boston, Philly, NYC, DC, Chicago, and San Francisco. All dates are listed below.
The NYC show happens on September 18 at Webster Hall, and tickets for that show go on sale Friday (7/22) at 10 AM with artist and Spotify presales underway now, and an AmEx presale starting Wednesday (7/20) at 10 AM.
Tracklist
1 Closest Thing to Heaven
2 You Got Me Where You Want Me
3 I’m a Man
4 Not My Lover
5 When That Somebody Is You
6 You
7 Zut Alors!
8 Fever Forever
9 Beating on the Outside
10 I’m Sorry
Michelle Branch — 2022 Tour Dates
SEP 12, 2022 Brooklyn Bowl Nashville Nashville, TN
SEP 15, 2022 Paradise Rock Club Boston, MA
SEP 17, 2022 Brooklyn Bowl Philly Philadelphia, PA
SEP 18, 2022 Webster Hall New York, NY
SEP 19, 2022 9:30 Club Washington, D.C.
SEP 21, 2022 Park West Chicago, IL
SEP 24, 2022 The Fillmore San Francisco, CA
SEP 26, 2022 Troubadour Los Angeles, CA
SEP 27, 2022 Troubadour Los Angeles, CA
