Just Breathe: Revisiting Michelle Branch's 'Hotel Paper'

Following up a hit album is no easy task, but Michelle Branch did a solid job when Hotel Paper hit stores on June 24, 2003.

The follow-up to her breakthrough The Spirit Room, which featured radio smashes "Everywhere," "All You Wanted" and "Goodbye to You," was a bit of a head-fake from the first single. "Are You Happy Now" was a brooding rocker with a drum loop that sounded like none of the hits that came before. And Branch said that was on purpose.

"I was 14 and 15 when I wrote the last record, and I???m 20 now," Branch told Entertainment Weekly at the time. "I think the change is just that I grew up. Hopefully, I???m a better writer and a better player...The first album was kind of a jumble ??? I was trying to figure out what I wanted. I???m very proud of the first record, but this one is so absolutely ME, from start to finish."

Branch said she drew inspiration from acts like Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt for the album, and picked a title to reflect her whirlwind life since becoming a pop star. "I spent so much time in hotels over the last couple years that I wrote all the songs on this record on hotel paper," she said. "It kind of sums up how the past couple years have been."

While "Are You Happy Now" might've been a surprise, second single "Breathe" fused the rock sound of Hotel Paper with a brilliant, soaring pop chorus that proved her skills as a songwriter. And it's a road she'd continue to travel through the rest of the decade, though not under her own name: in 2004 she and singer Jessica Harp founded the duo The Wreckers, who guested on Santana's "I'm Feeling You" in 2005 and released an album in 2006.