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This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.

This week we're featuring some of our favorite interviews of the year.

Today we hear from musician Allison Russell who sings original songs in a powerful voice that rings out.

Some of her songs are about a subject that many people feel they have to keep secret.

She was physically and sexually abused by her adoptive

father through her childhood until she left home at age 15. She has a song about one night

when she was in high school and had to escape him, she ran to the home of

her girlfriend, her first love, and tapped on her window, asking to be let in.

As we learned in other songs, some night she escaped him by sleeping in a park or a cemetery or sheltering in a cathedral.

She also has songs about learning she's capable of being loved and reentering her body after having had to

mentally detach from it to survive. Her mother is white, her biological father is

black, and her adoptive father is a white racist. She sings about that too.

After performing in bands for many years she now records under her own name.

Her first solo album, Outside Child, released in 2021, won a Juno Award, the Canadian

equivalent of a Grammy for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year. Russell grew up in Montreal.

Her latest album, The Returner,

is currently nominated for four Grammys.

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