{"id":2993,"date":"2011-08-02T09:42:10","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T16:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=2993"},"modified":"2011-08-02T09:44:34","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T16:44:34","slug":"chely-wright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/chely-wright\/","title":{"rendered":"CHELY WRIGHT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

CHELY WRIGHT<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A secret weighed her down, and now the truth is lifting her up<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There are many words to\u00a0describe the experience of hiding one\u2019s sexuality in the notoriously conservative world of mainstream country music,\u00a0and Chely Wright knows them all.\u00a0\u201cCrazy-making,\u201d she says. \u201cPainful. Lonely. Isolating. Awful. It about killed me.\u201d Wright rose to fame in the 1990s with radio hits\u00a0like \u201cSingle White Female,\u201d but was compelled to keep her homosexuality a secret lest she alienate her traditional-minded fans. The Kansas native, now based in New York\u00a0City, tells the nakedly emotional truth about her\u00a0sometimes turbulent past and her newfound sense of freedom in both her new\u00a0album, the Rodney Crowell-produced Lifted <\/em>Off the Ground<\/em>, and autobiography,\u00a0Like Me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

How did you write these new songs? <\/strong><\/p>\n

This is my most truthful, creative offering. This music is like I peeled my skin off and repackaged and pressed it, it\u2019s that close to me. I wrote as a matter of survival. These songs annoyed the crap out of me, quite frankly. I just wanted to sleep, and they scratched their way out of me. I was really not myself, in so many ways. It was raw emotion and hurt and despair and fear\u2014all those things that real artists pray for. (laughs<\/em>) The things that poets, painters and songwriters revel in were finally happening to me,\u00a0and I didn\u2019t like it. I didn\u2019t want it. I wanted rid of the pain, and I wanted my control back. I had a breakdown\u2014although a good friend of mine called it a \u201cbreakthrough,\u201d and I tend to agree with her.<\/p>\n

How did you translate all that into a finished album? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a long writing process and a long recording process. I wasn\u2019t in a huge hurry to make a record. In fact it was Rodney\u00a0who, nine months after he began to hear demos of the songs I was writing, said, \u201cNext time you make a record, you need to let me produce.\u201d I said, \u201cHuh? A record?\u201d He\u00a0said, \u201cYou do want to make a record, don\u2019t you?\u201d I said, \u201cHmm, I hadn\u2019t thought\u00a0of that.\u201d I produced on several of my records, and I knew that on this record I didn\u2019t want to do it. I had poured myself so wholeheartedly into these songs, it\u2019s as if I crawled across some creative finish line and I didn\u2019t have one ounce left in me to have any notion\u00a0of producing.<\/p>\n

Why did you write the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started the memoir to tell a particular truth about myself: I wanted to come out. I thought it was going to be, \u201cHey, I\u2019ve got something to say. By the way, I\u2019m gay!\u201d (laughs<\/em>) But what I ended up telling was my life story, which I think is interesting aside from the fact that I\u2019m gay and I\u2019ve been hiding my homosexuality my whole life.<\/p>\n

How do you look back now on that experience? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s absolutely insane for me to have put myself through the stresses that I did. I\u2019m no better and I\u2019m no worse than anybody else walking around on the planet. I\u2019m not a saint. I am<\/em> a sinner, but being gay is not one of my sins. I know some people will dispute that, and I\u2019m not going to stand around and argue the Bible. That\u2019s not my place. I can tell you that I know one sin for sure\u2014and that\u2019s to tell a lie.<\/p>\n

How do you think your longtime fans will handle all this? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent a lifetime trying to imagine what fans would think of me, and I released myself of that the day I decided to come out. Of course I don\u2019t want to lose my country music career, although I fully expect to. It will break my heart if I do. But I now know there are more parts of my heart that matter.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>\u2013Chris Neal<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHELY WRIGHT A secret weighed her down, and now the truth is lifting her up There are many words to\u00a0describe the experience of hiding one\u2019s sexuality in the notoriously conservative world of mainstream country music,\u00a0and Chely Wright knows them all.\u00a0\u201cCrazy-making,\u201d she says. \u201cPainful. Lonely. Isolating. Awful. It about killed me.\u201d Wright rose to fame in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[2271,70,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2993"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2999,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions\/2999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}