What would Linda Perry do? Out of all people, Linda Perry is the one asking that question. After spending decades writing and producing for other artists, crafting film scores, and keeping herself busy as hell with non-performance related projects (like her nonprofit), the artist got used to translating her style for others behind the scenes. Now, with Let It Die Here, her first solo album in 25 years, she’s stepping back into her own skin.
“I’m like one of those fucking actors that really dive into their character. I commit myself and I don’t break character,” Perry tells Consequence from Gold-Diggers in Los Angeles. “What ends up happening is I start losing myself after years and years and years of doing that. Somewhere along the line, I forgot who I was. I could write songs and do all this stuff for anybody in the room, but not for myself.”
Get Linda Perry’s Let It Die Here on Vinyl
She had recognized the pattern, but reclaiming her artistic sense of self wasn’t going to be a straightforward process. As captured in her recent documentary, Linda Perry: Let It Die Here (a film she didn’t even realize she was making, mind you), the catalyst for Perry to begin writing for herself again came amongst quite a bit of personal turmoil, ranging from serious health scares to losing her mother.
In a sense, Perry didn’t consciously set out to finally write more “Linda Perry material” as much as she had an innate compulsion to deal with the confusion, uncertainty, and upheaval through creation. So, after noodling around with a snippet of an idea for a song, she let her creative and emotional impulses take the wheel.
“Things started going dark… I just said to [director Don Hardy], listen, ‘I need to go into a rehearsal room, and you’re welcome to come film me, but that’s where I’m going. I got to go jam,’” she recalls. “I had no fucking clue what I was doing…. So, the night before, I wrote the song ‘What Lies with You.’ And that is the song I show up with, kind of still writing lyrics.”
“That song basically started the whole album,” she continues. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, where did that come from?’ I wrote that. I wrote that for myself.”
From there, the floodgates were open, with Perry ultimately cutting 17 songs for Let It Die Here. Notably, within the tracklist is her first ever recorded rendition of “Beautiful,” the 2002 hit she penned for Christina Aguilera. If that isn’t Perry reestablishing her voice, I don’t know what is.
As the end of Perry’s Let It Die Here experience nears, does she feel she came out the other end better for it? Healthier? Better at managing her time and energy? More at peace?
“There’s never healthy time in the music business,” she says. “There’s boundaries that are created. I go over those boundaries all the time. Am I happier crossing those boundaries? Am I more wise? Am I thoughtful? Am I a little healthier? Absolutely.”
Watch our full video interview with Linda Perry above or on YouTube. You can also get Let It Die Here on vinyl and CD here, and check showtimes for the Let It Die Here documentary at Perry’s website.