Ophelia by Natalie Merchant

Ophelia, Natalie Merchant's second solo album, came out on Elektra on May 19, 1998, five years after she left 10,000 Maniacs, the band she had fronted and written words for since 1981. She made it at home, in Talking Dwarf Studio, a room she built in her own house, and it stayed the only record ever cut there before she sold the gear in 2022. That domestic setting suits the music: folk at heart, unhurried and intimate, with Merchant's dusky voice front and center.

"Kind & Generous" was the one that stuck, reaching the top 20 on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart, with "Break Your Heart" following it out with a video of its own. Those clips, along with the album's other videos and a handful carried over from Tigerlily, ended up on a home video also called Ophelia, and the album gave her the only top-ten entry of her career on the Billboard 200, peaking at number eight.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.