Bonnie Raitt can’t be summed up easily. Some people might view her as a sassy blues singer, some as a no-nonsense social activist, and some as an observant balladeer who writes deeply serious songs such as “Nick of Time” (a 1990 Grammy winner about a woman wanting to get pregnant before it’s too late) and “Just Like That,” a stunning track about a heart transplant survivor that won a Grammy last year for song of the year . It turns out, of course, that Raitt is all of the above and more.
At this point in her life, she cannot be stereotyped. “I don’t always just do blues or just do rock ‘n’ roll and up-tempo songs,” Raitt, 74, said in a recent phone interview ahead of her show at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway on June 15. “I think part of the reason I’ve lasted as long as I have .
.. is pacing.
It’s something I learned from watching my dad in those classic Rodgers and Hammerstein shows.” As the daughter of Broadway star John Raitt, who starred in “Carousel” and “Oklahoma!,” Raitt talked about how those shows were presented. “They knew how to build the pacing, and how to set a beautiful song or a sadder song in the perfect place in the show.
And I have about four different songs like that, which I have to nestle in my set. If you do them too soon, or too late in the set, or bunch some together, then energetically it doesn’t work. You have to honor the flow — and that’s the way I feel about all the songs I’ve written.
I’ve written s.