Ms. Blue Sky: Juliana Hatfield Talks ELO
Catching up on the latest in the Boston alt-rock great’s covers series
Starting five years ago, singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield began establishing a unique pattern in her career: in between her albums of original material, she creates covers albums that focus on specific artists.
First there was Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John (2018), then Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police (2019). On November 17, she’ll repeat this process when she releases Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO (via American Laundromat Records).
Calling from her Boston area home, Hatfield says she’d initially intended to do an album of R.E.M. covers this time, but then realized she needed to become more familiar with the second half of that band’s career before she could proceed. That seemed overwhelming, so she began thinking of another artist she could cover instead, and she remembered Electric Light Orchestra, who seemed perfect for this kind of project.
“I thought, ‘I definitely have to do certain songs that were huge hits in the ’70s when I was a child,’ just because they were such a part of my experience growing up – they’ve almost become part of my musical DNA because they got into my system when I was at such a formative age,” Hatfield says. “Songs like ‘Strange Magic,’ ‘Telephone Line,’ ‘Can’t Get It Out of my Head,’ ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ – I just felt those were really important to their history, and also to my own history as a listener. So those were kind of obvious choices, right?”
AUDIO: ELO “Bluebird is Dead”
She also chose songs that are more obscure. “I picked things that I was identifying with at the time, like ‘Bluebird Is Dead,’ [because] a friend of mine had just died,” she says, “and I discovered some ELO material that I had never heard – I didn’t know about this album Zoom [from 2001]. I thought the song ‘Ordinary Dream’ was such a beautiful, fantastic song that I recorded that one for my album. And [of ELO’s] early ’80s songs, ‘Secret Messages’ was another one I discovered in researching this project, and now I love that song.”
She hopes that hearing her album will inspire listeners who aren’t already familiar with ELO’s work to go on their own journey of discovery with that band’s material. She’s well aware that there are plenty of ELO superfans, too, but she has faith that they’ll appreciate her efforts.
“I think it comes across how much I revere the original work,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to mess with any songs just for the sake of messing with them. I wasn’t trying to do any novelty versions or shock versions. It was more like, ‘How can I take these great songs and make them into something that feels really natural coming out of me?’ That’s the challenge and the fun for me, is to get them to feel like, in a way, they’re my own. I think I’m just paying tribute to all the pleasure and joy and comfort that those songs have given me over the years.”
Taking another artist’s songs and transforming them into her own style is, she says, “an organic process.” She begins by playing the songs on an acoustic guitar and singing along, slowly tweaking things until everything fits her vocal style.
She admits that working so intensively to master other artists’ songs has yet to influence her own songwriting, though. “I keep hoping that recording these other songs will pull me out of my habits of songwriting,” she says, “but after I do a covers album, I go back and I keep writing in my same style, the same way. I try not to get down on myself about it. I guess I should start thinking about my songwriting habits not as ruts, but they’re my style. I have this style that’s unique to me and it’s very natural. So I guess I should just embrace it and stop trying to hope that it will change.”
Her last album of original material, Blood, came out in 2021, and she says she has another in the works now. Writing songs seems to come easily to her: it’s clear that she’s not doing covers albums because she’s run out of ideas of her own.
“Everything I read and hear and watch and encounter, it’s all very much inspiring,” Hatfield says. “I feel lucky that I still feel inspired and I still have things I want to say through music. Which is kind of amazing after all this time, that I have anything left to say. But I think music is a reflection of a person’s life. It’s a reflection of thoughts and feelings and ideas.”
As she was growing up in the Boston area, Hatfield was always strongly drawn to music. As a teenager, she became convinced that she needed to become a professional musician after she attended a house party, where she sang the Police song “Roxanne” with the band that was playing in the basement.
“That was the first time I sang alone in front of anyone – that was a major, major moment for me,” she explains. “I was so nervous. And after I did it, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can sing in front of an audience – I can do it!’”
From there, Hatfield pursued her music career with single-minded determination. “It was a desperate ambition to get my music out there. I was really unhappy when I was younger, miserable, and music felt like the only way out, the only way for me to get any air. I couldn’t breathe, and I just was grasping at music. I couldn’t communicate in my day to day life. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t have any social skills. So I just needed to make music.”
VIDEO: Juliana Hatfield “Universal Heart-Beat”
She attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she formed the band the Blake Babies, whose four studio albums earned much critical praise. After that, she briefly joined the Lemonheads, then released her debut solo album, 1992’s Hey Babe. Forming the band The Juliana Hatfield Three, she became one of the leading alternative rock artists in the 1990s with the hit singles “My Sister” and “Spin the Bottle.”
Since then, Hatfield has returned to her solo career, releasing nearly two dozen albums to date – and she’s far from finished. “I’ve always felt a need to keep getting better at what I do. My [Juliana Hatfield Three] album Become What You Are from 1993, I meant it – and I’m still trying to become what I am. I’m not there yet, but music’s part of it.”
She thinks she understands why she’s attracted such a loyal, longstanding audience for her work: “I’m not trying to just put over a catchy hook. It’s more like, I’m trying to be really honest about what I’m thinking, and I have strong feelings about things. I don’t pretend anything. I read a lot about darkness and confusion and alienation, which are all really real things. That’s just part of the human condition. And I never try to pretend that that’s not happening all the time, with everyone, because it is.”
Now, whether she’s releasing original work or honoring one of her musical heroes, she’s happy that she can do it on her own terms.
“My audience is small enough that there’s no pressure to sell a lot of records, so I can do whatever I want,” she says. “I can make an album of ELO covers. How crazy is that? I don’t have to ask anyone for permission. No one’s telling me, ‘That’s not going to sell,’ or ‘How are we going to market this?’ I just do whatever the hell I want. And that’s a great kind of freedom.”
VIDEO: Juliana Hatfield “Can’t Get It Out Of My Head”
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