Portrait: Michelle Cross

A new star in the form of Michelle Cross, who has already found thousands of enthusiastic listeners, has been rising in recent years in the international songwriter heavens. The American, raised in Japan, manages to combine perfect, subtle, soft sounds with emotionally powerful singing, not just telling a little story with every one of the songs she has written, but representing it vocally. Michelle Cross will certainly take her place in the coming years next to the similarly strong voices which have influenced her, such as Tori Amos, PJ Harvey and Björk. It is often attempted to compare her with Tori Amos in particular, but this cannot communicate more than a general impression of what the listener can expect from Michelle Cross. Both have intensive, powerful voices and are - each for herself - unique. But this comparison makes one thing clear: Michelle Cross's music is anything but "easy listening". She doesn't whisper elf-like declarations of love into the microphone, but gives free reign to all her emotions, even rage and frustration. Her first demo album could not have been given a more appropriate title than "My Name is not Cinderella".

My name is not Cinderella,
And the sun don't reflect off my hands.
I'm pretty, but I'm plain and I prefer it that way.

But anyone who is open for her songs will discover what a voice and a piano can achieve, and, like so many others, loose oneself in her musical world. Her very personal texts tell of the heights and depths of love and, with her distinctive voice, she breaths life into them so that the text itself becomes relatively insignificant at many points. Hope, sorrow, rage, loneliness - no feeling remains unnamed, un-experienced. Her similarly versatile piano playing, more a second voice than background, supports her in the process.


Her career began in the coffee houses and clubs in the suburbs of Chicago, where she appeared both solo and as singer in a band, and steadily gained recognition. When she met her later producer Matthew Prock, he knew immediately that Cross had a great career ahead of her: "I remember my friend looked at me and said, 'That's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard'. That's what Michelle's music tends to do to me as well. I know that other people react that way, [they] just kind of loose themselves in her songs." Prock pressed Michelle to press ahead with her solo career, organizing for her a band with various musicians who were to support the singers piano playing, and the result was that the debut album "My Name is not Cinderella" appeared in 1999, which was soon commended by rollingstone.com and garageband.com.

Her most recent album "Smoke like Perfume" displays a significantly more mature and differentiated Michelle Cross, but who still has not lost her edges - on the contrary, she appears to now have perfected her completely unique style. Sad, melancholy songs with a quiet sound ("Her lovely Name") alternate with powerful melodies and heartrendingly beautiful singing ("Big Fish"). It is exactly Cross's versatility and her refusal to conform to popular norms or to allow herself to be pigeonholed which are the characteristics which raise her above the masses of pretty American singers. We can only hope that she maintains this singularity and love of songwriting in the future. In response to the question, whether she will continue to developer her music so passionately and ambitiously in the future, she replied: "Oh absolutely, absolutely, because I love doing it. I love it."
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