You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Herway.

Just a heads up, there's some explicit language in this episode.

Michelle Branch is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter. She put out two platinum albums when she was still a teenager.

Those records were huge hits, and so the sound on those records defined her as an artist for better or for worse.

Over a decade later, in 2017, Michelle put out her third album, Hopeless Romantic.

In this episode, Michelle talks about why she was in a musical limbo for so long, as she takes apart her song, Best You Ever.

This is Michelle Branch.

I was signed at a really young age. I was 16 or 17 when I signed to Maverick, and my first album came out in 2001.

And everyone's first impression of me was that.

And certain people had a hard time letting go of that.

I feel like a lot of people just wanted me to make a pop record.

But it started to dawn on me that I had never made an album that sounded like what I really listened to.

I don't listen to a lot of pop, pop music. I'm more of a fan of rock music, and I found myself in a weird position because I was under contract, and they wouldn't drop me, but they wouldn't release any of the music I was making.

So it was really frustrating. It felt kind of like I was being held hostage by my own record label.

I was like, can I just please put out an album, and they're like, well, this isn't pop enough.

You don't know what to do with it.

And it was really, really, really frustrating.

And so finally, in 2014, a new label head came in, and he's like, I cannot believe what you've been through, and you deserve a fresh start.

And I'm going to let you go. So I finally got out of my contract with them in 2014.

But it was really strange time for me because I was newly divorced.

I had just separated from my husband of nearly 11 years.

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