(Credit: Deborah Lopez)
In the video, Michaelson’s face lights up whether people recognize the song or not. “Not famous!” she grins as another Minnesotan shrugs at the catchy refrain that’s turned up everywhere from “Grey’s Anatomy” to Old Navy commercials.
Ultimately, about half the shoppers surveyed recognized “The Way I Am,” but if Michaelson tried the same experiment now, she’d probably have better luck. “The Way I Am” has become an iTunes sensation, selling over 300,000 copies digitally and helping push Michaelson’s self-released album “Girls and Boys” into the Billboard top 100.
From her manager’s office in Los Angeles, Michaelson talked about what it’s like to be on magazine covers—and still living with your parents.
Congratulations for being on the cover of Billboard. That must have been pretty exciting.
Yeah. It is pretty weird. The whole thing is so surreal; it doesn’t really feel like it’s happening to me.
I could see where it would feel a little surreal to see yourself as the main photo and cover story, when tucked away in the corner of the cover is…
Radiohead! I know.
Apparently you’re bigger than Radiohead.
Right. Yeah. That’s silly. That’s just a silly thing to say.
Well, there were a few people in your Mall of America video who didn’t recognize “The Way I Am,” but not many. You got a pretty good split.
Yeah. I think that was all we taped, too. It wasn’t like we did any more. I think we had three “not famous” and like five “famous.” So that was pretty good.
You didn’t edit it to skew the results in your favor or anything?
No. I think that was the order of it, too. Nobody knew [the song] for the first three, and then everybody else that we asked knew it.
That’s how fast people are hearing “The Way I Am.” In the time it took you to film that, that many more people had heard it.
[Laughs] I guess.
You still live in the house that you grew up in?
Pretty much, yeah. I lived away for a little bit and then I had to move back home for various reasons. I do eventually want to buy or rent my own place. But because I’m away—I mean, at this point I have three different tours that are back to back. So I’m going to wait until there’s a little bit of a lull and then I’m gonna look for a place.
I imagine by this summer you’ll be able to look for a nicer class of apartment.
Yeah. I’ll be able to get a place that hopefully isn’t infested with mice and cockroaches.
You do seem to have a gazillion tour dates. When you’re on the road so long, what are three things that you can’t live without?
I have to have my iPod…I have to have my Blackberry. What else? My ukulele, because I can compose anywhere.
Do you write a lot of your songs on the ukulele?
I’ve been writing more of them on there, yeah. At least ideas of songs and beginnings of songs.
Does this mean your next album will have more of a Hawaiian vibe?
No. I hope not, anyway. No offense to Hawaiian music, but...[that’s] not where I see my stuff going.
You were a theater major, correct?
Yeah. Musical theater.
What was your big role?
I did a lot. I really liked—I played the role of Dot in “Sunday in the Park with George,” which is a Stephen Sondheim musical.
Did you have a lot of voice training doing musicals? Was that where you got your start singing?
Oh, yeah. I took voice lessons from when I was about 13 and all through college. I was pretty much classically trained, with a little bit of musical theater.
And you started taking piano lessons at an early age, too, right?
My parents put me in piano when I was about four or five, and I stumbled my way through about 10 years of lessons. I’m not very good. I have a very good ear, so I kind of cheated my way through all the lessons. The teacher would play the piece for me and I would sit there—I could barely read music. Now I can’t read music at all, but I could at one point. And I would sit there and sort of find my way through until it sounded right, and then I would memorize it. So I really didn’t get the full effect of piano lessons.
But it's still your main instrument?
Yeah. I do write on the guitar now—I write on the guitar more than the piano. But I do feel more comfortable on the piano.
So on this tour, will you be breaking out the guitar onstage more? Perhaps even the ukulele?
Oh, yeah. I definitely play one or two songs on the guitar and the same thing with the ukulele. The uke, you can’t do too much—it’s too specific of a sound.
So do you ever just walk into Old Navy stores now and, I don’t know—demand free stuff?
No. But I do laugh when I see an Old Navy. I just kind of chuckle to myself.
