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For Lisa Loeb, Life Is 'No Fairy Tale,' And That's OK

Lisa Loeb's newest album is called <em>No Fairy Tale</em>.
Courtesy of the artist
Lisa Loeb's newest album is called No Fairy Tale.

In the mid-1990s, odds are you turned the radio on one time or another and heard Lisa Loeb's "Stay (I Missed You)," her platinum-selling No. 1 hit song.

The singer-songwriter revisits that same decade on a new track called "The 90's," from her latest album, No Fairy Tale, her first adult album since 2004's The Way It Really Is.

Loeb tells Rachel Martin, host of Weekend Edition Sunday, that being a female singer-songwriter in the '90s was difficult.

"I felt like there were a lot of labels," Loeb says. "I played acoustic guitar, and I still do ... but in the '90s I think people would think you're a folk artist. I didn't feel like I was a folk artist."

Today, she says it's a bit easier, and the music landscape is a bit wider for female singer-songwriters.

"There's so many different ways you can listen to music that you don't have to fit into a genre so that somebody can market you to a handful of stations," she says.

After releasing children's albums, books, stints on two reality shows and releasing her own line of eyewear, Loeb says she was kicked into gear to do another adult album by friend Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory. He called and agreed to produce the album, and Loeb says they got started within weeks of the call.

The title track, "No Fairy Tale," is not as negative as it might sound, Loeb says.

"Actually, this song is about how life is more rich than a fairy tale," she says. "I think in life ... the actual ups and downs of real life are a lot more rich than some that might be perceived to be a perfect fairy tale life."

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