Over ten years later, 43-year-old Melissa Etheridge has become the most famous lesbian musician in the world, having sold over 25 million records worldwide, with eight albums and two Grammy awards to her name. Last February she released her eighth album, Lucky, just a few months after she married actress Tammy Lynn Michaels (Popular, The L Word) in a Malibu wedding that was featured on ABC’s In Style Celebrity Weddings.

Etheridge has gone through her share of ups and downs as a celebrity, including her much-publicized breakup with Julie Cypher in 2000, shortly after the couple announced that the father of their artificially-inseminated children was rock legend David Crosby. Etheridge has weathered these public invasions of her personal life with an aplomb that is rarely seen in our media-saturated society. Most recently, her announcement that she was diagnosed with breast cancer showed the same steady strength and personable attitude that has characterized nearly all of the coverage of her relationship with Tammy Lynn Michaels.

In response to the news of Etheridge’s diagnosis, fans created pink bracelets emblazoned with the words “Be Strong,” the proceeds of which go to benefit the Dr. Susan Love Breast Cancer Foundation. News reports about Etheridge’s surgery, which was successfully completed last week, have been uniformly positive—another sign that this musician has done what few other lesbian celebrities have been able to do: create a public persona that resonates with many people, gay or straight, male or female. Few other lesbian couples have been featured in a People Magazine spread or a Cartier ad the way Michaels and Etheridge were shortly after their engagement.

Etheridge’s popularity has a lot to do with her music, which has always been decidedly mainstream, middle-American rock and roll. As she told The Advocate in 1994 shortly after she came out, “I have always been the working woman’s singer. I come from the Midwest. Mine is heartland music. My audiences are very mixed.”

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