You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Just a heads up, there's some explicit language in this episode.
Michelle Branch is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter.
She put out two platinum albums when she was still a teenager.
Those records were huge hits,
and so the sound on those records defined her as an artist, for better or for worse.
Over a decade later, in 2017, Michelle put out her third album, Hopeless Romantic.
In this episode, Michelle talks about why she was in musical limbo for so long,
as she takes apart her song, Best You Ever.
This is Michelle Branch.
I was signed at a really young age.
I was 16 or 17 when I signed to Maverick.
And my first album came out in 2001.
And everyone's first impression of me was that.
And certain people had a hard time letting go of that.
I feel like a lot of people just wanted me to make a pop record.
But it started to dawn on me that I had never made an album that sounded like what I really listened to.
I don't listen to a lot of pop, pop music.