The Trouble With Fever

Grammy Award-winning and multi-Platinum selling singer-songwriter Michelle Branch has announced her new album The Trouble With Fever, on Audio Eagle/Nonesuch Records/Warner Records.  The album’s first single is ‘I’m A Man’.

“I wrote the chorus of ‘I’m A Man’ long before the verses.  It started as an empathetic view towards men struggling to find a new way to navigate in a post-‘Me Too’ world of toxic masculinity,” says Branch.  “Having a son made me think of how men are taught to be from a young age and the pressures to provide and succeed and this sort of burden to be seen as macho.  But you can’t tell that story with just one side of the coin because as I was trying to paint a sympathetic view it just seemed completely minuscule and ridiculous in comparison to the struggles that women have been dealing with, really, since Eve bit the apple.  Why are nearly all mass shooters male?  Why do I need my husband’s written permission in 2022 to get my tubes tied?  Why do American women have fewer reproductive rights than our grandmothers?  Why don’t we get paid as much as men?  Why do I have to teach my daughters not to walk alone at night?  And so on and so on.  Yet we carry on with grit and grace like we always have because we have no other choice.”

Created during the pandemic lockdown, The Trouble With Fever, co-produced with her husband, Patrick Carney (The Black Keys), is Branch’s fourth solo album and follows her critically acclaimed 2017 album, Hopeless Romantic.  The time at home gave Branch the opportunity to stretch herself creatively. She says: “The album began during the 2020 lockdown, while Patrick and I were here at home in Nashville.  I didn’t realize I was making a record at first — it was more just for our own sanity, getting time together to play music and screw around in the studio.”

Branch kicks off her The Trouble With Fever Tour on September 12 in Nashville with dates in New York and Los Angeles, among others.  International tour dates to be announced soon.