17 years after retiring, Canadian icon Anne Murray returns with new music
Anne Murray
Nearly two decades after announcing her retirement from music, Anne Murray is opening the vault once more.
On her 80th birthday last fall, the Canadian icon released Here You Are, a collection of previously unreleased recordings made between 1978 and 1995.
“I didn’t remember a lot of them,” she says. “I’ve recorded in excess of probably as many as 400-500 songs over the years. It was like hearing them again for the first time.”
Murray first became a household name in 1969 with “Snowbird,” which helped make her the first Canadian artist to earn a U.S. gold record. Her career went on to include four Grammy Awards, a record 26 Juno Awards and honors on both the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame.
Since retiring from music in 2008, Murray has spent much of her time living quietly in Nova Scotia, so when she was surprised with a tribute at the Grand Ole Opry last October, she was taken aback by the applause she heard when she walked onstage.
“I said, ‘Who’s here?’ ” she says. “I’ve been out of the limelight for so long. Then I went, ‘Oh! That’s for me!’ ”
Today, Murray joins World Cafe to talk about why she felt ready to open the vault, what it was like hearing these songs with fresh ears, and she shares stories from her long and illustrious career.
Interview Highlights
On releasing a new album
“This was a big surprise to me, and I had totally forgotten that there were songs in the can, as we call it. But there you go. There was a very zealous fan who went searching and found them. Every album that we had, we always overcut and then we would choose. So a lot of those songs ended up on the cutting room floor, as they say, and didn’t get used.”
On the reality of her successful career
“It was hard work. The whole thing was just plain out hard work. Sure, we had fun once we got onto buses. We had the women on one bus — the chick bus — and then we had the crew on another bus and the band on another bus. Once we started that, it was a little more fun, the camaraderie and all of that goes on.
“But it was hard work — and I was a workhorse. As time went on, I found that my voice couldn’t take working three nights on, a night off, two nights on … Once I got in my 60s, my voice would not do what I wanted it to do on a consistent basis.”
On her first time at the Grand Ole Opry
“I was pretty nervous, at that time, meeting everybody. My memory of that first time of being there was being at the old Ryman Auditorium, which was the original Opry building, and there was one dressing room for eight of us women. Dolly [Parton] was there and Minnie Pearl was there. Lynn Anderson was there. There were a lot of people who are no longer with us.
“I remember so well because you couldn’t breathe for the hairspray — there was so much hairspray. Of course, I never would let anybody near me with hairspray. But they were all really lovely to me. Loretta Lynn, in particular, was so sweet to me, and they all welcomed me.”
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe‘s engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.