Melissa Etheridge - The Awakening

There's back to the beginning, and then there's back to the beginning. It doesn't get much more elemental than All There Is," the brief, swirling invocation of the essence of the universe with which Melissa Etheridge opens The Awakening, the ninth studio album of her singular career.

The story she tells through this involving, colorful song-cycle, though, is completely her own, a tale that runs from her first uncertain steps through her well-chronicled rise to rock star, human rights activist, parent, cancer survivor and 2007 Academy Award winner for I Need to Wake Up, featured in the Al Gore environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

It's a journey full of joys and tears, portrayed in songs that are at turns powerful and playful, at once confessional and engaging, personal and universal. In other words, Melissa Etheridge at her creative peak - and the most open she's ever been.

And it's Etheridge as we've never heard her before ...

• All There Is
• California
• An Unexpected Rain
• Message To Myself
• God Is In The People
• Map Of The Stars
• Threesome
• All We Can Really Do
• I've Loved You Before
• A Simple Love
• Heroes And Friends
• The Kingdom Of Heaven
• Open Your Mind
• The Universe Listened
• Imagine That
• What Happens Tomorrow