When Melissa Etheridge announced in August 2003 her engagement to marry actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, it was one of the happiest times of her life.

Ironically, it also left Etheridge, after 15 successful years as a singer-songwriter, with some serious doubts about her career.

Call it the “Tortured Artist’s Syndrome.” Etheridge always had written from a place of emotional pain. Now that she was happy, finally, she wondered if her songs would carry the same emotion as her previous work.

“That was definitely a question in the back of my mind,” she said by phone from her home office in Los Angeles. “It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve finally found this peace and happiness in my life. Does that mean my career is over? Am I going to be able to write songs?’”

The answer to the first question is a resounding no; the answer to the second is yes. The result of Etheridge’s foray into love and happiness is chronicled in her latest album, “Lucky,” released in February on Island Records. It’s by far her most joyful album, she said, and a far cry from the her previous work, “Skin,” which in 2001 was a narration of the breakup of a 12-year relationship.

“What I found is that while I have always written from my experience and my emotions, they don’t have to be tortured and sad. I can write truthfully and interestingly from the experience that I’m having and, thank God, it’s a joyful one,” she said. “It’s a journey of finding that joy and finding myself and it wasn’t harder. It was just following the same rules I’ve always followed and just let the truth come out.”

She also discovered playing happy songs can make for fun concert experience for her and the audience.

“I love playing these songs (from ‘Lucky’) live,” she said. “They’ve gotten such a great response. They make the show a lot of fun. Some songs are great in the studio and they sound good, but you play them live and they just kind of sit there. All of these songs live have grown and are just a blast to play.”

It’s not the first time she’s written an album conducive for live performances, but it has been a while.

“My first album (self-titled from 1988) was a real good live album. The fourth and fifth, ‘Yes I Am’ and ‘Your Little Secret,’ they are a lot of fun live. But albums like ‘Breakdown’ and ‘Skin’ (from 1999 and 2001 respectively), those are studio albums. I don’t play a lot of those songs live. Sometimes I’ll play a song from ‘Skin’ and then a song from ‘Lucky’ just to kind of juxtapose this is where I was, this is where I am now.”

The performer back then

Etheridge, 43, was one of the 1990s more popular recording artists because of her heartfelt and confessional lyrics and her distinctive slightly-raspy voice.

She picked up her first guitar at age 8 as a youth growing up in Kansas. She played in local bands and later attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. But after one year, Etheridge chose to leave school and move to Los Angeles to pursue a singing career.

A regular gig at the Executive Suite in Long Beach, Calif., led to a bidding war among major record labels. Etheridge chose Island.

Her self-titled 1988 album featured her first hit, “Bring Me Some Water,” plus the hits “Similar Features” and “Like The Way I Do.” The album reached gold in sales. She was invited to perform at the Grammy Awards, and a year later, she released “Brave and Crazy,” which also reached gold and had the hit “No Souvenirs.”

She released her third album, “Never Enough,” in 1992, which reached platinum in sales and had the hits “Ain’t It Heavy,” “Dance Without Sleeping” and “The Letting Go.” She even won her first Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a female for “Ain’t It Heavy.”

But amidst her successful run as a singer-songwriter, Etheridge also was plagued with rumors regarding her sexuality. She turned the rumors into truth with the release of 1993’s “Yes I Am,” a title that says it all.

Fearful of possible backlash but even more fearful of denying her true identity, Etheridge revealed her true self on the album. Helped by the major hits “I’m the Only One,” “If I Wanted To” and “Come To My Window,” the album sold more than 6 million copies in America and earned a 1995 Grammy Award for best Female Rock Vocalist. Her fears about being shunned for her sexuality were, for the most part, unfounded.

But her next three releases, as even Etheridge admits, struggled in the public eye. “Your Little Secret” from 1995 and later “Breakdown” and “Skin” did not capture the success she had attained earlier.

Her personal life, it seemed, became more important than her music. Her failed 12-year relationship with Julie Cypher and their two children (both of whom were conceived via artificial insemination from sperm donations by musician David Crosby) left Etheridge in the dumps. Along with “Skin,” she wrote an autobiography in 2002 called, “The Truth is: My Life in Love and Music.”

She also cut the autobiographical “Live...and Alone” DVD in 2001. That same year, she met Michaels, and the two quickly fell in love. They live with Etheridge’s children in Los Angeles.

The performer now

Of course, having a family means added responsibilities, so Etheridge’s carefree way of writing songs had to end.

“I’ve been writing music since I was 10, and I’ve learned and worked on the craft of writing,” she said. “In my 20s, I was the artist that would sit around and write all the time, and I’d take my notebook with me and I’d sit for hours with my guitar.

“But with the success of my 30s, it became where I decided to write on the road because that’s the time where I have all this time to myself. But now with a family, I have to kind of schedule when I’m going to write, which puts a different twist on it. Like today, Mom’s going to work from 10 to 2, and it’s always different. It starts with some sort of inspiration and then I go from there.”

That’s how the “Lucky” album came together.

“Because I’ve written for so long, I don’t get freaked out if nothing’s happening that day. I’m like, ‘You know what? I tried, not here.’ And because I believe that whatever’s going to come out will come out, I just come back the next day. I’ve never really had writer’s block.”

The performer in concert

Along with having some of her favorite songs from “Lucky,” Etheridge also has what she calls her best-ever band.

“This has been one of my favorite tours ever,” she said. “I love my band. I’ve had talented musicians before, but I’ve never had the personalities and the talent all rapped up in such a delightful package. The three guys I’m playing with are just the best.”

One is Mark Browne, who has played bass with Etheridge for 13 years. Another is drummer Kenny Aronoff, a classically trained musician who might best be known as a former 15-year member of John Mellencamp’s backing band. Also in the 1980s, Aronoff became one of the most sought-after session drummers in the business as he played on albums by Bob Dylan, Jon Bon Jovi, Bob Seger, Meat Loaf, the Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Indigo Girls, Alice Cooper and Willie Nelson. He’s toured with many of the same people, as well as the Smashing Pumpkins and John Fogerty.

“There’s not much to say about Kenny other than he’s one of the best, period,” she said. “We also have a new guitar player, Philip Sayce. He’s so talented, so delightful and so fun to look at. He’s just beautiful.”

Sayce came in so prepared the band hasn’t missed a beat, Etheridge said.

“When I’m on stage, I’m always trying to entertain,” she said. “I don’t like to set back into anything and get routine at all. So I’m always pushing the musicians: Do this, do that, try this, try that. So once you get to a comfortable place where I can basically just look at them and they know what we’re going to do, that’s kind of where we’ve gotten the last few weeks (in Europe).”

But not all is smooth in Etheridge’s life. She still has to pay the price for being gay by legal rulings that simply make no sense to her. For example, a recent decision said her copyrighted songs can not be passed on to her spouse, because the couple is gay (Same-sex marriages aren’t considered legal in California).

“It’s so absurd it upsets me to the point where I just shake my head,” she said. “It’s just another example of the discrimination and frustration with people or policy makers who refuse to move ahead in our world and our society. To be moving forward and then trip on a brick of discrimination is always frustrating.”

Although open about her feelings — “It’s easier to be myself than it is to try to be someone I’m not” — Etheridge doesn’t actively participate in the gay movement. She chooses another route.

“By living my life truthfully, I naturally just become an activist,” she said. “Because the best thing I can do is live my life well and hopefully inspire others to do the same. Just being out and being myself, it puts a face to these things. Hopefully, I can help make changes by living my life as truthfully and honestly as I can.”