It’s been thirty years since her hit single Damn! I Wish I Was Your Lover burst onto the airwaves.
Sophie B. Hawkins’ debut album, Tongues and Tails went platinum and secured her a Grammy nomination for best new artist – as well as her place in the music industry as a brilliant song-writer and performer.
Now, she’s taking the album back on tour, and coming to Ventura County.
"I used to tell people it's 20 years and I believed it and then someone corrected me and it's actually 30 years!" she told KCLU.
"It feels fresh. When I sing it on stage, what a gift that album is to me. I'm getting up there and singing Damn! I Wish I Was Your Lover at the end of the show and it's just like, wow what a great song I get to sing and it feels better than ever," Hawkins said.
Sophie embraced her identity and representation in her music and videos from the start of her career – she’s spent decades as an LGBTQ trailblazer.
"I'm very happy to step up and fight for everyone's rights, and sing for everyone's right and love for everyone's rights. It's time - it's come again - to do that," she said.
Speaking of the third verse of Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover, which was released in 1992, Sophie refers to her lyrics of "making love to her."
"It's not meant to be ballsy, it's just poetic, you know," she told KCLU. "But it has this resonance with people that is deeply personal to them."
"I said I was omnisexual way back in 1992," she said.
Hawkins says she was asked in an interview what that meant.
"My sexuality isn't based on gender. Just because you're a man doesn't make me straight or because you're a woman doesn't make me gay. And now, that's normal," she said.
Her new single, Love Yourself, was released Thursday. Hawkins told KCLU that she was conscious of her daughter's body image and would coach her to be body positive as she was growing up.
With four studio albums under her belt, another on the way, countless live gigs and thousands of fans of her music - Sophie’s favorite role, is that of mom to her two children.
Sophie B Hawkins is at the Canyon at Libbey Bowl in Ojai on October 16 and the Canyon Agoura Hills on October 23.
