Right through an outside live performance full of an target market of prisoners on the Topeka Correctional Facility, rock singer Melissa Etheridge with a bit of luck informs the all-female crowd that “You’re the handiest you,” sooner than she hits them with a rendition of her 1993 unmarried, “I’m the Best One.” Eerily harking back to Johnny Money’s notorious jail excursion all through his musical profession, Etheridge ushers in a contemporary live performance revel in for a keen throng of listeners that’s now not too dissimilar to the rock legend. On the finish of the day, it’s about connection, a theme that emerges as Etheridge explains why she’s appearing on the distinctive venue.
It’s obtrusive within the first couple of minutes of “Melissa Etheridge: I’m No longer Damaged” that this isn’t a standard live performance documentary. A two-part docuseries that concentrates its power at the pitfalls of drug dependancy and the failed penal machine revolving round rehabilitation, Etheridge speaks immediately to the digital camera as she prepares for a enormous display on the aforementioned correctional facility. Starting 9 months sooner than the live performance, the “Come to My Window” legend explains her causes for appearing for prisoners, basically because of her upbringing in Leavenworth, Kansas, a the town well-known for its personal jail.
The one different landmark in Leavenworth? A guitar-shaped signal that greets guests getting into town that reads, “The Homeland of Melissa Etheridge.”
However the underlying thread that connects Etheridge to the ladies housed within the Topeka Correctional Facility is the truth that she misplaced her son to a fentanyl overdose in 2020. Nonetheless coping with the trauma of shedding a kid, the singer is decided to lend a hand the ones nonetheless suffering with dependancy whatsoever she will. Participating with jail employees and 5 particular prisoners, Etheridge needs to offer the incarcerated inhabitants the live performance of a life-time whilst vocalizing her beef up for adjustments to the machine.
The braveness and resilience of those ladies, who’re striving to conquer their previous and construct a greater long term, is inspiration personified.
Interviews with prisoners about their reviews with drug dependancy, and the way they ended up in jail, spotlight the earnest reasoning at the back of Melissa Etheridge’s intentions. Tugging on the heartstrings of an emotional adventure that conjures up Etheridge to draft a brand new tune devoted to the prisoners, the docuseries explores the fractured courting between dependancy and imprisonment. Discussions are offered of those ladies’s hopes and fears main as much as the debut of Etheridge’s new tune, aptly known as “I’m No longer Damaged,” for lots of the sequence.
A nonetheless from “Melissa Etheridge: I’m No longer Damaged.” (Paramount+)
The directing duo at the back of “Melissa Etheridge: I’m No longer Damaged,” Brian Morrow and Amy Scott, are prepared to stay audience guessing as to how Etheridge’s new tune will sound. The docuseries is interspersed with scenes immediately from the live performance whilst taking audience again to when the songwriter evolved the tune in her Los Angeles house. She interviews 5 incarcerated ladies who in the long run impressed her to write down a melody stuffed to the brim with transcendence and therapeutic, for a inhabitants of prisoners who haven’t hooked up with a performer in fairly a while.
For lots of of those ladies, Melissa Etheridge is their first live performance revel in. That turns into obvious as we be informed their fears for the long run and the hope a singer like Etheridge brings to their confined life. The docuseries brings to gentle most of the demanding situations they face whilst giving Etheridge a platform to stun an keen congregation together with her sultry sound.
It’s an impressive reminder of the transformative energy of tune, providing hope and solace in even essentially the most difficult instances.
Melissa Etheridge in “Melissa Etheridge: I’m No longer Damaged.” (James Moes/Paramount+)
Boy, does she ever! There aren’t a large number of performers fairly like Melissa Etheridge nowadays, particularly taking into account the hurdles she’s had to conquer to get to this second in her 63 years. A lot of that isn’t explored by way of this sequence. Reasonably, the focal point is squarely put on Etheridge’s guilt and revelations of her son’s loss of life all through the opioid disaster, and the way it pertains to the difficulties those incarcerated ladies undergo inside of their very own drug addictions.
“Melissa Etheridge: I’m No longer Damaged” lifts up a inhabitants of girls forgotten by way of society and strives to inform an inspiring tale full of overcoming loss and human connection thru tune with others experiencing trauma and grief. The sequence shines a gentle on what many imagine a failed penal machine, the usage of Etheridge because the seductive voice of reason why. Despite the fact that many facets of that machine aren’t essentially repaired thru her need to have an effect on exchange, the documentary does an incredible activity of traversing prisoners’ reviews the usage of empathy and working out set to the music of Etheridge’s vocal genius.
Earlier than the credit get started rolling, audience and the in-person target market are rewarded with Etheridge’s latest tune, devoted and impressed by way of her conversations with the 5 incarcerated ladies. The emotional have an effect on of Etheridge’s new tune, impressed by way of the tales of those ladies, is in reality transferring and underscores the ability of tune to glue and heal. When you weren’t conversant in Melissa Etheridge’s paintings and political activism sooner than, this sequence will make a fan out of you.
“Melissa Etheridge: I’m No longer Damaged” premieres Tuesday, July 9, on Paramount+.
The publish ‘Melissa Etheridge: I’m No longer Damaged’ Overview: Rock Tune and Drug Dependancy Intersect in Shifting Jail Docuseries gave the impression first on TheWrap.
