Throughout Jenny Lewis’ musical career, her songs have occasionally made reference to her mother’s troubles and Lewis’ relationship with her mother, although those are topics she hasn’t explicitly discussed in a public setting. In a new Rolling Stone profile, though, Lewis decided to discuss her mom, and she described the up-and-down relationship they had.
Lewis talked about how they reconciled in her mother’s final days, and explained the meaning of the white stickers on her fridge that bear the Providence Holy Cross Medical Center logo, saying, “Every day that I visited my mom in the hospital, I’d get one of these and write down something she’d say to me. She got more and more psychedelic as we kept upping the meds, and she’d say the most amazing things. She had liver cancer. From untreated hepatitis C. She was a lifelong heroin addict and also mentally ill and… just a really sad situation.”
She spoke more about reuniting with her mother towards the end of her life, saying, “We were estranged for 20 years, so this was the first time we’d hung out in two decades. She was very sick, but I think she held on so we could have time to reconcile, and it created an opportunity for forgiveness. She didn’t have to say, ‘I’m so sorry’ — she said it by saying, ‘You’re a sunshine in a fruit.’ That was her way of saying ‘I love you.'”
Meanwhile, Lewis also mentioned how Kanye West’s Ye album influenced the way she went about mixing On The Line: The piece reads, “When it came to mixing, she says she took inspiration from Kanye West’s Ye — clearing out the midrange, focusing on the low end and the highs.”
Lewis also told other stories about her her mother and her childhood, so read the full interview here.
On The Line is out 3/22 via Warner Bros. Pre-order it here.
Jenny Lewis is a Warner Music artist. .
