When the Lights Go Out: An Analysis of Ingrid Michaelson’s “Lights Out” (E2D3)
The first time I ever listened to Ingrid Michaelson was my freshman year of high school. My cousin had been obsessed with her for years, but for some reason I always refused to listen, despite my cousin’s urges. My family was planning on driving to Boston over spring break, and I had no good music to listen to, so I downloaded a few Ingrid Michaelson albums. I listened nonstop for the five-hour ride to Boston, and for the whole ride home. From then on, I was obsessed. I would go to her concerts and spend far too much money on t-shirts and posters. I tried (and failed) to get all of my friends to listen to her music. I waited for her after concerts for a chance to talk to her and take a picture with her before she left the venue. Her music has helped me to power through the hard times and to celebrate the good ones. She is one of my favorite humans and one of my biggest inspirations.
I have been to three Ingrid Michaelson concerts. My favorite of these shows was a small performance (roughly fifty people) at a salon. The salon was owned by her friend Heather, who started an Indiegogo fund to get the business started. One of the prizes on the Indiegogo was an intimate show with Ingrid Michaelson if you donated one hundred dollars to the salon. My cousin and I spent all of our respective birthday money on tickets to the show. We stood right in the front and sang along to every song, and afterwards we got to take pictures with her and all of the members of the band. She was so sweet to us and she made us feel like we were friends, not fans. It was one of the best nights of my life.
This show was about two years ago, when Michaelson was in the middle of writing Lights Out. At the time of writing Lights Out, Michaelson had been facing several obstacles.
“Her 6th album “Lights Out” debuted at No. 5 and has received some of her best reviews ever. But while working on the album, her dog died and both her parents became seriously ill. In August, Michaelson’s mother, who had undergone a bone marrow transplant, lost her battle with cancer” (cbsnews.com).
Everything became different for her at this point; the way that she interacted with her fans and even the way that she sang changed. It was crazy to me that I had seen her live and even spoken to her when she was going through this time in her life. She had been so kind to us; we could not even tell that she was feeling lousy. She decided to pour her emotions, happy and sad, into her upcoming album.
It’s hard to describe Michaelson’s “sound.” She is classified as a pop artist, but her songs are not the type to be played three times per hour on the radio. Because she is still considered an “independent artist” (she has not officially signed with any label), her music does not reach as many people as it could, had she signed with a label.
“Her songs have been hits, but they’ve never crossed into overplay or overkill territory like Adele’s have. And she frequently imbues her songs with emotional, diaristic honesty, but never to the point where she feels like she’s wracking up as many heartbreaks as possible just so she can channel it all into her music (a complaint that many detractors have levied against Taylor Swift). Instead, Michaelson is like pop music’s “girl next door”…she seems as friendly and genuine as any independent artist, even though she’s making the big bucks and selling out venues left and right” (Manning, absolutepunk.net).
Michaelson’s sound and lyrics are unlike any other in the business. She is incomparable to the big pop artists of our time, like Taylor Swift and Adele (as mentioned above). She is constantly trying to redefine pop music in her own way.
Collaboration is one of the main components that make Lights Out so noteworthy. The album cites many different producers and co-writers, and it includes an abundance of duets.
“This whole record has been really different for me. Every other record I’ve written was by myself. I was in control and all my songs were written by me and one producer. This year, I wanted to do something different so I had ten writers and five producers. We went to Nashville, L.A., New York” (Tam, washingtonpost.com).
I find it interesting that Michaelson worked with so many different people to create her most personal album yet.
“’There was something about writing with all these people that kind of opened up things maybe I wouldn’t have thought of before, which I think a good co-writer will help you do,’ explains Michaelson…’Getting in a room with someone else, it’s like a date, a conversation. I ended up just being able to tap into things I wouldn’t have without these other people” (Graff, billboard.com).
I think that her travels also contributed to the diversity of the album. For example, Mat Kearney, who is based in Nashville, is a co-writer and singer on the country-like track “One Night Town.” Ian Axel and Chad King of A Great Big World are featured in “Over You,” a modernized version of a classic, everyday ballad. The band’s New York origin helps to explain the song’s more modern vibe. “The vibe of this record is so collaborative, it’s a big community getting together and I wanted all the songs to embody that sonically” (Tam, washingtonpost.com). Working with many different artists and producers and being open to travel and collaboration helped Michaelson to explore her own emotions and experiences even further.
In one of the last songs on the album, Afterlife, one of the lyrics is “Every time I close my eyes I hear your favorite song, telling me not to run, not to worry anymore.”
I love the way that this is a sad, meaningful lyric about her mother, but it is set to upbeat music; Afterlife is the album’s anthem. The music video for Afterlife (attached above) is incredibly powerful and clearly shows Michaelson’s intention to make it a feel-good pop anthem. However, Afterlife is one of only two bubbly, truly pop-like songs on the album (the other being “Girls Chase Boys,” the most popular song on the album). One particular review argues:
“‘Afterlife’ is a triumphant ode to tomorrow, defying thoughts of depression with triumphant shouts of “We’re gonna live tonight like there’s no tomorrow” and “You and me we got this, you and me we’re beautiful.” Moments like these are too few and far between to call Lights Out a balanced record. In fact, a better ratio of up-tempo songs to all of the slow, thoughtful and poetic ones would work miracles on any future Ingrid Michaelson record. But as it stands, this is still a humble work — one that remains true to Michaelson and the vision that she has for her music” (sputnikmusic.com).
A short while after Lights Out was released, I saw another article on Twitter that said that Michaelson and her husband, Greg Laswell (who is featured on the track “Wonderful Unknown”), got a divorce. “Their joint statement read, ‘After careful consideration, and with mutual respect, we have decided to separate. We ask for privacy as we navigate this time in our lives’” (Wakeman, inquisitr.com). Naturally, my cousin and I texted frantically, wondering how in the world our favorite couple decided to split. Since they are both songwriters, we didn’t think that it was because of her long hours in the recording studio. It was a mystery to us, especially because her mother had passed away so recently. One would think that a death in the family would be all the more reason for her husband to stay by her side.
I then thought about one of the lyrics to the song “Stick” from Lights Out. “There’s a part of you that stays with me, someone else gets to know, did any of me stick at all?”
Maybe she felt that Greg was no longer paying attention to her, or that she wasn’t impacting his life the way he was impacting hers. It’s intriguing to me to see these seemingly random lyrics actually connect to Michaelson’s experiences. That’s why I picked this particular album for my essay. Not only is it my favorite of her six albums, but I see it as the most relevant to her life at the time. I think it embodies life as a whole; the ups and downs that everyone goes through are clearly present within the different tracks. The main theme I gather from Lights Out is that your life can turn upside down in an instant, just as quickly as the lights can go out.
Acknowledgements
There are many people who have helped me shape this essay into what it is now. I would like to thank Professor Harris and Kacey for reading each draft and giving me great advice. I would also like to thank Gabby and Kelsey for their feedback and for helping me see my essay from a new perspective. My roommate, Claire, has also been very important to my writing process; she listened to Lights Out nonstop with me while I wrote my paper and offered a lot of helpful comments. I would also like to thank my mom for her input when I was trying to decide on my primary source; if it wasn’t for her, I probably would have chosen a topic that was not as personal to me.
Author’s Memo
Writing this essay on one of my favorite people and her work was a lot of fun for me. It was very interesting to look at Lights Out through a critical lens, rather than an “oh my gosh I love Ingrid Michaelson” lens. I like how I explained my original fascination with Ingrid Michaelson and how I related it to my analysis of her latest album. I also enjoyed looking for a deeper meaning in her lyrics, and seeing how different emotions can be conveyed through song.
References
Graff, Gary. “Ingrid Michaelson Embraces ‘Intellectual Poppiness’ on ‘Lights Out’ Album.” Billboard. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6091981/ingrid-michaelson-embraces-intellectual-poppiness-on-lights-out-album>.
“A Great Big World.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 15 Nov. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Great_Big_World>.
“Ingrid Michaelson’s “Lights Out” Reflects Tough Year, Losing Mother to Cancer.” CBSNews. CBS Interactive. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ingrid-michaelson-lights-out-reflects-tough-year-losing-mother-to-cancer/>.
“Ingrid Michaelson Lights Out.” Review: Ingrid Michaelson. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/61898/Ingrid-Michaelson-Lights-Out/>.
Manning, Craig. “Ingrid Michaelson — Lights Out [Album Review].” AbsolutePunknet RSS. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=3697272>.
“Mat Kearney.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 15 Nov. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat_Kearney>.
Michaelson, Ingrid. Lights Out. Mom + Pop Music, 2014. MP3.
Risch, Eric. “Ingrid Michaelson: Lights Out.” PopMatters. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://www.popmatters.com/review/181607-ingrid-michaelson-lights-out/>.
Tam, Ruth. “Ingrid Michaelson: ‘I’ve Never Called Myself a Feminist, I Just Was One since Birth.’” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 8 Feb. 2014. Web. 15 Nov. 2015. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/02/08/ingrid-michaelson-ive-never-called-myself-a-feminist-i-just-was-one-since-birth/>.
Wakeman, Gregory. “Ingrid Michaelson Divorce: Singer Splits From Husband Greg Laswell.” The Inquisitr News. Web. 08 Nov. 2015. <http://www.inquisitr.com/1882185/ingrid-michaelson-divorce-singer-splits-from-husband-greg-laswell/>.
