Featured Essay: Closer I Am to Fine: A Lifetime with The Indigo Girls

by Sarah Wilson

“I’m trying to tell you something ‘bout my life.” The words feel like a hand extended across time, reaching to my eighth-grade self in 1989. That was the year the Indigo Girls released their first record, and though I can’t recall exactly when or where I first heard them, I know I fell in love instantly. Their music—raw, poetic, and deeply resonant with harmonies that blew my teenage mind—became the soundtrack to my adolescence, especially that first record I bought and played on my bedroom record player.

There was something about the ritual of it. Slipping the vinyl from its sleeve, feeling the weight of it in my hands, placing it gently onto the turntable. The slight crackle before the music began felt like an invitation, an opening into a world that was both deeply personal and profoundly universal. I would sit cross-legged on my teenage bed, letting the harmonies of Amy and Emily wash over me, their voices filling up all the empty spaces I didn’t yet know how to name. Those early listens of Indigo Girls were formative, the soundtrack to diary entries, long phone calls with friends, and endless moments of teenage longing.

As a Catholic schoolgirl navigating middle and high school, I felt both emboldened and comforted by their songs. They gave me permission to belt out lyrics in my bedroom, to embrace curiosity, and to connect deeply with my friends. Emily and Amy were the first lesbians I knowingly encountered, but their music wasn’t about being “other”—it was about being human. They sang of love and longing, of the South (where I lived/live) and philosophy, weaving stories that felt like they could be mine, too.

It’s Only Life After All

“The best thing you’ve ever done for me is to help me take my life less seriously.” I carried those words with me during dark moments in adolescence and now even middle age. Their music became a balm for young heartbreak and a buoy during road trips with friends. When life felt overwhelming, their harmonies reminded me to breathe, laugh, let go, and sing loud.

At some point in the early ’90s, my records got packed away. CDs took their place, their sleek convenience making vinyl feel suddenly old-fashioned. But even as technology changed, my devotion remained. I played Rites of Passage on repeat in my car, and later, when music shifted to digital, I created Indigo Girls playlists on Spotify. Yet nothing quite compared to the warmth of that original vinyl, the way the music felt alive in a way digital formats never could replicate.

I saw them live for the first time as a teenager at an outdoor venue in Knoxville, TN, where their music seemed to merge with the world around me. The sun on my face, the dancing of the crowd, and the echo of their voices created moments of pure joy. By the time I attended their concert at The Mountain Winery in California with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, I had already seen them several times. That concert, however, was special. Nestled in the hills under a canopy of stars, we joined a chorus of fans, all of us singing along. Even he—someone who didn’t grow up listening to their music (he leaned toward Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Beastie Boys for his coming-of-age) — found himself swept up in the communal magic. I remember looking at him, glowing with gratitude.

There’s More Than One Answer to These Questions

Most recently, I saw them in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium in the spring of 2023. I felt a pang of recognition in the graying hair and laugh lines of the crowd. We were all older, but still, we sang along with the same fervor we’d felt decades earlier. A pair of women in our pew who had had a few too many spilled beer on my jeans, and after rolling my eyes, I stayed and continued to belt out the words with a mixture of nostalgia and defiance.

That summer, they appeared again, this time on the big screen in the Barbie movie which I watched with my three daughters. When Closer to Fine played, I found myself grinning in recognition. The song, already an anthem of self-discovery and resilience, became even more powerful in this context. It seemed a rallying cry for women, feminism, and Barbie-like independence. To hear it woven into a story about breaking molds and reclaiming identity resonated with me in a way that felt almost fated. My daughters, who have come to love vinyl records themselves, swayed along with the music in the theater, though they will never know what it felt like to experience that album in the time it was first released, at an age when every lyric felt like a revelation. They have found their own albums for this, though.

Twice as Cloudy as I’d Been the Night Before

These days, I find myself wrestling with new challenges: navigating the overly turbulent political climate, grappling with perimenopause and middle age, raising three teenage daughters, and balancing the demands of work, creativity, and family. The weight of it all can feel suffocating.

Throughout these new life challenges, my family and I often turn to music to get through and also savor it. We seek out and play albums by beloved Nashville artists like The Wood Brothers and Joy Oladokum. My husband and I flow through albums that have been the soundtrack throughout our 25+ year relationship like Wilco and Radiohead that we share with our girls. And then there are the albums that our girls have turned us onto that reverberate through the house like Harry Styles, Dominic Fike, The Wasia Project and The Drowners — all whom they often listen to on vinyl and share with us on socials.

But every once in a while when times feel especially hard, I cue up the Indigo Girls on Spotify, their voices rising like a lighthouse in the fog. “It’s only life after all,” they remind me, and those simple words still have the power to ground me and lull me to sing along.

Through it all, The Indigo Girls have been a constant companion through every stage of my life, pointing me toward the crooked lines, urging me to embrace the messiness of it all.

Closer I am to fine, indeed.

Sarah is a freelance writer and public relations strategist based in Nashville. She writes about parenting three teenage daughters with her husband, Brad, as well as activism, local Nashville, travel, and more. When she’s not writing, she’s adding to her small but growing vinyl collection—though she still needs to re-buy The Indigo Girls album of her youth. 

Find Sarah on Instagram @TheWanderingRumpus and TheWanderingRumpus.com

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