I really admire this woman

I am, of course, talking about Melissa Etheridge.

Melissa is probably on top of my most admired artist list and has been there for a while. She is the only artist of whom I have all the albums. And she is probably the most honest of them all.

When she writes her songs and when she sings them, you can feel all the emotions she has gone through while writing them. All her anguish, all her pain, all of the ecstacy she feels, she pours into her songs. That gives a very special quality, a Melissa quality, to all her songs. She stands unique in that aspect.

For someone who has been around for a really long time, to come out consistently with rock solid albums is really something. Her latest greatest hits collection is exactly that.

While there are quite a few songs that I felt ought to be on the album, but then it's a mark of her quality as an artist that she has far more greatest hits than can fit on a dual CD album.

You have to listen to "This is not Goodbye" and "I run for life", both of which are new songs which she wrote after recovering from breast cancer. You can feel all that she went through when she was undergoing treatment. "This is not Goodbye" is especially heart wrenching, where she is talking about the effect of her treatment on her partner and her promise that this is NOT goodbye. It is an especially great song. And it is typical Melissa. A fabulous straight-from-the-heart rendition with fantastic lyrics.

She is the greatest and I absolutely love her music.

Thank you, Melissa. You have made my life a lot better by letting me enjoy your music.