Joe Uchill has a must-read article in this week's Shepherd on Juliana Hatfield and her struggles with eating disorders. It touches on a personality shift that's alto doubled as a career-reviving business model for Hatfield: After falling out of fashion and then into obscurity as the '90s ended, Hatfield reclaimed her former prestige as a critical darling by, ironically, doing the exact opposite of what made her so in demand at the peak of her fame: She became an open book. Once shy, virginal and mysterious, Hatfield began to blog about the indignities of being a fallen starlet, and, increasingly, about the darker details of her life. This year her newfound tell-all policy culminated in an often stark and lofty memoir which has helped usher in a critical reappraisal of the singer, who for years was dismissed as a lightweight in part because of her girlish voice. It's not the phoenix-like comeback movies have taught us to expect, but for the perpetually put-upon songwriter, being on college radio stations again is probably triumph enough.
Juliana Hatfield plays the Turner Hall Ballroom Wednesday, Dec. 3, with an 4 p.m. in-store at Atomic Records earlier that day. In the meantime, because I love it, here's the old video for "Universal Heart-Beat."
