My Goal Was to Write Classic Songs: A Conversation with Sophie B. Hawkins

Photo Credit: Marc Andrews

Joe

Sophie B. Hawkins had a bunch of unforgettable hits in the ’90s, most notably “As I Lay Me Down” and “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” which have become timeless songs and made her a household name in the ’90s. Chances are you heard both of those songs countless times on the radio in the ‘90s. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of her most well-known album, Whaler Hawkins is touring Canada and the U.K. and putting out Whaler – Re-Emerging, which are new versions of her classic album.

Hawkins chats with OFM about celebrating 30 years of Whaler, her upcoming release Whaler – Re-Emerging, success, the song “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” becoming an LGBTQ+ anthem, her appearance on Community, and her musical Birds Of New York.

30 Years Of Whaler

Whaler continues to make a huge impact 30 years later, with many people still connecting to songs like “Right Beside You,” “As I Lay Me Down,” and “Only Love (The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty).” “My goal was never just to write a hit song; my goal was to write classic songs, and honestly, I’m telling you the truth, every time I write a song, and it doesn’t always happen, of course, but every time I write a song, I want it to be able to be a classic song,” says Hawkins. “I got a great comment the other night after my musical Birds Of New York. One of my friends came and said, ‘I never know what your next lyric is gonna be.’ I think that’s wonderful because, oftentimes in songs, you can guess what it’s gonna be. You can guess what the next rhyme is gonna be. I think that’s something I try to do. I try to have the music that, even though there are some parts of it that are comforting, and we know that chord progression, something that I really aspire to include is to go to a place people don’t know and even surprise myself. I have to like my own music 30 years later. When I re-listened to Whaler, I couldn’t believe how much I love the songs.”

One of Hawkins’ favorite moments of Whaler was recording “Mr. Tugboat Hello.” It is also one of her favorite songs to sing live. “My apartment on Christopher Street was facing the Hudson River, so I would see the tugboats, and it reminded me of when I was in first grade,” she shares. “I was in a school called Town School in Manhattan, on the East River, and I would watch those tugboats. I never learned a thing because I was always watching the tugboats. So, then, when I moved to Christopher Street as a grown-up and started making records, it was almost like reconnecting with my beginning self. And I always say it’s in defense of daydreaming—I love the feeling of ‘Mr. Tugboat Hello.’ It’s such an affirmation of this internal young love that we all have.”

Judy Garland was also a huge inspiration for the song. “I was watching a lot of Judy Garland movies, so it combines those great show tunes and that wonderful vivacity of Judy Garland singing and lyrics, and it also combines me and my childhood.”

Whaler 30th Anniversary Tour Dates

Hawkins is embarking on a tour to celebrates the 30th anniversary of Whaler. She will be making many stops in Canada and the U.K. Hawkins is excited for all these shows and is very happy that Belinda O’Hooley is joining her for the U.K. dates. Hawkins came across O’Hooley’s music through the TV show Gentleman Jack. The theme song of that show, also titled “Gentleman Jack,” was created by O’Hooley and her wife, Heidi Tidow. “That song led me to dive into their catalog and understand what great musicians they are, how many wonderful songs they have, and how rooted they are in their community.”

Hawkins shares that getting O’Hooley to support her for the tour came together quite spontaneously. “When I was going to the U.K., I DM’d her, which is something I’ve never done before, and I said, ‘Do you have any suggestions for musicians that I can use for over there?’ because I thought that that would be better having musicians that lived there rather than bringing musicians from here. Belinda said what I wanted her to say, which is,’ I’ll do it.’ But I was still amazed that she said it, like, ‘WOW! This is all coming together wonderfully.’”

“We rehearsed on Zoom once, and she just has got it all. She’s a great composer, songwriter, and musician, and I think songwriters make the best musicians for songwriters because they understand the fullness and the rhythm. They understand how to keep the momentum going and to be full, but also leave a space—She’s gonna be great to tour with.”

Whaler – Re-Emerging

Later this year Hawkins will release Whaler – Re-Emerging. This album updates the original versions of the songs. It was also recorded live, something that Hawkins really enjoyed doing. “I love the parts that we came up with,” she grins. “I love my vocals. They’re untouched, real, and raw, and that appears on every album, but this sounds live because it is basically live. It is also delicate, and it’s intricate because we so carefully took the parts that over time, 30 years later, listening to the album, like ‘That part is really great. We can’t lose that. We need to weave these things together.’ It was really wonderful. It was like digging into someone else’s past.”

Hawkins made it a point not to call them reimagined versions. “We took the best parts of Whaler, and I have to say, we didn’t as much reimagine them as I relived them as my age now,” she comments. “It’s me in my life now. The songs are as pure, romantic, and joyful now, and even more so than then because there were all the conflicts with the record companies, but now there’s none of those conflicts. There is so much acceptance of myself. To sing the songs now is such a privilege and is a reward for sticking around.”

Thoughts on Success

Hawkins was one of the biggest pop stars in the world in the ‘90s, with several of her songs becoming massive hits. “What I love about my success in the beginning is that it anchored me in success,” reflects Hawkins. “It took so long to get to that success. It was so hard, and also, being a woman in the ‘90s, there weren’t that many of us singer-songwriters who really wrote all the stuff ourselves, and there were very few of us who were actually celebrated. I was one of those, and that has sustained me until now ‘cause even just to say, for example, I’ve written this musical called Birds Of New York. We just had a reading at a theatre in my town, and the thing that made these actors who are really successful sign on to do this reading was the name Sophie B. Hawkins. If I hadn’t had that success, they would have known who I was, and they probably wouldn’t have said ‘yes’ so easily. So, I have to say I’m very grateful for the success.”

Originally a drummer, it took Hawkins quite a while to reach that level of success. “It took me a long time to get signed,” she explains. “I was rejected all the time. I can’t wait to write a memoir because my journals are full. I couldn’t get a record deal; I could barely get a band together. I had hundreds and hundreds of songs—When I finally did get signed, it had been a long time coming that I had so many songs that it seemed like an overnight success, but it wasn’t. I had been kicking around a long time.”

Despite not being as popular as she was in the ‘90s, Hawkins finds she is successful in other ways. “I’m now writing musicals, working on my book, painting more, and just enjoying the artistic freedom I feel like I’ve earned,” she comments. “I don’t really care about success in the same way. I was sitting on my porch the other day, and I said, ‘Success is being a good person surrounded by good people.’ That is a true statement, but it comes now after living through all those things. I know that’s true now. I know that’s the only thing that’s true.”

“Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” Becoming an LGBTQ+ Anthem and Promoting Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw

Over the years, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Love” has become a LGBTQ+ anthem. “I’m happy it’s an anthem,” comments Hawkins. The lyric “Making’ love to her with visions clear” almost got scrapped. “That was pretty bold, and it was my first single, and I really fought for that to be in there. Sony could have easily won, and it got cut—I fought for every little bit of that song, and thank God I did, because it would have been just a great pop song, and now it’s a legendary pop song.”

During this time, Hawkins came out as omnisexual, further cementing the song as a LGBTQ+ anthem and Hawkins as a LGBTQ+ icon. “When Tongues And Tails came out, and I did my first interview in the New York Times, Jon Pareles asked me if I was a lesbian, and I thought, ‘How do I answer this honestly because I am everything,” she shares. “I mean, I’ve lived through so many relationships that are so important, and I thought about it, and I said, ‘Jon, I’m omnisexual.’ And he said, ‘Well, what does that mean?‘ I said, ‘It means that my sexuality isn’t defined by your gender. It means that my sexuality isn’t always even defined by my gender, that my sexuality is creative and spiritual. It will grow, and it will change—I am me, and I will define myself, and sometimes, most times, I don’t want to. I want to be in the moment of it.’ Our sexuality really is in our mind. And our mind has a lot to process.”

Additionally, around this time, Hawkins was supporting and promoting Kate Bornstein, a trans author, on pop radio. Initially, she was ridiculed for promoting Bornstein. “I was promoting a trans author named Kate Bornstein who wrote a book called Gender Outlaw, and I was promoting it on pop radio in the ‘90s, and I want to take credit for that, and I got so much shit for it,” she says. “I want to take credit for it, not because I got shit for it. I want to take the credit for it because I was right to be promoting it.”

Appearing in Community

If you didn’t come across Hawkins’ music in the ‘90s, you may have encountered it through the popular TV show Community. Hawkins appears as herself in the episode “Herstory of Dance” and performs “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” and “As I Lay Me Down” during Greendale Community College’s Sophie B. Hawkins Dance, which was named so because Britta Berry (played by Gillian Jacobs) confused Hawkins with Susan B. Anthony in an attempt to protest a Sadie Hawkins Dance that the college was having. She had a blast working on the episode. “I was a fan of Community—It’s just so great to be in another world and get to be on TV,” she smiles. “It was wonderful being on set with all of them. Every single cast member was so funny and warm. It was a great experience and made me want to do TV, to be honest, but they all warned me that TV wasn’t always that much fun. I got the best of being on TV.”

Birds Of New York

Hawkins is also working on her musical called Birds Of New York. It was initially a play, and then she started writing songs for the characters. “I’m writing really rich songs, and I have to say, as a songwriter, songwriting is the best vehicle for me telling the story of a character,” she states. “I have discovered I can really write for different characters, not just from Sophie B. Hawkins telling her story. I’m writing these characters, and they’re not Sophie B. Hawkins songs. They’re these character’s songs. Yes, I invented the characters, that is true. But they’re very different from me, and they’re all telling their own story.”

Writing songs that are not Sophie B. Hawkins’ songs was an exciting challenge for Hawkins. “I thought it would be hard,” she comments. “When I sat down and did it, it wasn’t. It was challenging but not hard. It was challenging, exciting, and very fulfilling because I do study people. As much as I’m talking now, my natural pose in life is to listen and to study people and to study them because I love them.”

Concluding Comments

Hawkins is unsure when her next album will come out. “I have an album ready of Sophie B. Hawkins songs, but really, in this day and age, because artists aren’t making any money on streaming, so how to put something out and feel like people actually hear it?” says Hawkins. “My last album, Be Myself, I knew it wasn’t going to make a dent, but it’s just so much effort, and you don’t get any return. You don’t get any return financially. No one knows you made an album and put it out anymore. So, my answer is, I have so much material; I would love to do an album, but to what end? How do I get it out there—I don’t have an answer. But I sure have one ready to go. Maybe the answer is just putting out demos.”