I’ve got some things in the works, but for right now, enjoy a song that was one of my favorites back in the early ’90s and which I’ve just rediscovered:

The song is called “You Can Sleep While I Drive” (if you hadn’t surmised that already), a somewhat obscure track from the 1989 album Brave and Crazy by Melissa Etheridge. As I recall, this song was my introduction to her… I have vague memories of hearing it on a short-lived but wonderful radio station called The Mountain (105.7 FM) not long after I returned from my summer sojourn in England, way back in 1993. Melissa broke out (and came out of the closet) that same year with the monster-selling album Yes I Am, but I’m pretty sure I first heard “You Can Sleep” before that happened. I honestly can’t recall for sure at this point, but no matter…

I’ve always loved the mood of this one, the plaintive earnestness, the restlessness, the slight tinge of wee-hours-of-the-morning desperation that seasons but doesn’t overwhelm the song. It was the perfect articulation of everything I was feeling after coming home from a big adventure that I knew even then was going to end up being a singular experience for me. I was struggling with going back to my movie-theater job, knowing that it was time to move on but having no idea what to do next. I was struggling with a lot of things, actually. And hearing a woman’s voice sweetly suggest that we shake off the familiar dust of home and just… drive… well, anyone who reads this blog knows that’s still an alluring fantasy for me.

Despite my long affection for this song, however, I’d never seen this video before today, and it’s really kind of a trip. The pre-coming-out Melissa looks like a tougher version of a friend’s wife, and she also has a certain something that reminds me of a girl I used to know a long time ago and still think about sometimes. If I’d seen this back in ’93 (or earlier, since the video was apparently made in 1990), I probably would’ve developed a big crush…