Natalie Merchant’s Lost American Songs

In the early nineteen-eighties, an unusual band emerged out of Jamestown, New York. They called themselves 10,000 Maniacs, and played a brand of folk-pop. Their lead singer and songwriter, Natalie Merchant, was a sixteen-year-old who wrote lyrics about Jack Kerouac’s mother, struggling parents in the Depression, and imperialism in Africa. Critics were eager to categorize her, but found it difficult to do so. Was she a swirling alt-rock dervish? An earnest polemicist? A bluesy balladeer with strong opinions about issues that shouldn’t concern her? But labels never mattered much to Merchant’s fans, nor to the singer herself. At the height of 10,000 Maniacs’ fame, she left the band, citing a lack of creative control, and began working on a solo album. The result, “Tigerlily” (1995), sold more than five million copies.