The song that shaped Sharon Van Etten’s music
Pioneer of the current cultural movement of indie sad girl music, Belleville-born singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten has been making honest, comforting guitar music for nearly a decade and a half. Predating the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Julia Jacklin, Van Etten released her debut album, Because I Was In Love, in 2009. Simplistic with folk leanings, the album focuses on a tender, intimate love.
Since her first release, Van Etten has released a further five albums alongside studying, working on film scores, and acting. Blending guitar with synths, her fifth album, Remind Me Tomorrow, featured what was to become her most well-known track, ‘Seventeen’, a euphoric song about growing up that recently featured on Yellowjackets. Her most recent album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, was released last year to critical acclaim.
With her most famous single focused on her teen years and much of her discography containing an undercurrent of nostalgia, it’s interesting to learn what Van Etten was listening to during this formative period of her life that inspired her music in later years.
During a past interview with The Guardian, Van Etten revealed the song that shaped her teenage years, ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’, by The Lemonheads. When discussing the track, she said: “Sometimes music should just be about you sitting on your bedroom floor, or in the back of the car, singing along stupidly. Evan Dando’s music was all about that for me.”
It’s fitting that Van Etten takes this easy, human approach towards music, given that her comforting indie folk sound is perfect to lose yourself in while sitting on your bedroom floor. Van Etten continues to gush over The Lemonheads’ lead singer Dando, stating: “He was my crush as a teenager, and I was such a fangirl – I queued up for a signing of this once but I was so excited, I didn’t have anything for him to sign.”
She continues to detail her interpretation of the track, adding: “It’s very innocent music, about being in love, hanging out with your friends, doing your own thing… it’s relatable, simple. I try to follow that. And the production of his records… you could always hear the whole band. You should always hear the whole band!” This focus on relatable themes and clean, full production can be heard across Van Etten’s discography.
However, while Van Etten’s association with the track is innocent and simplistic, in an interview with Songfacts, Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando shared his own interpretation of ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’ as “spooky.” He explained: “It’s about a disappearing person. It’s a very open-ended, grey sort of song.”
Van Etten is no stranger to combining the soft and the spooky either, and that same blending of moods can be heard on tracks like ‘Memorial Day’ and her cover of ‘The End of The World’. It’s not hard to see why she loved The Lemonheads and how their influence remains on her indie folk today.
