Jann Arden.

Jann Arden says it was easy choosing songs for her just-released album of covers, Uncover Me, that hit stores this week.

"I thought, I'm just picking songs that I sang in my parent's basement," said the jovial Calgary-based singer-songwriter, 45, while relaxing in a Toronto hotel suite yesterday. "And that's why this grouping of songs is so bizarre but I sang them over and over and over. The needle with the four pennies glued on. My mom and dad would never buy us a new needle, God forbid."

Among the varied tunes, which span the '60s to the '80s, is Janis Ian's 1975 adolescent angst anthem At Seventeen, which was the first song that Arden ever learned on guitar.

"Has anything changed? No it hasn't," said Arden, who will play Massey Hall April 24-26.

"It's worse for body image and kids dieting at eight (years old). It's just terrible out there. What a weird climate. I never thought society would be so driven physically to look a certain way. These eating disorders. And these models dropping dead on the runway. I never was like that. Maybe it was where I was raised in a rural community. I've liked myself every day. I mean I was depressed about this or that growing up but I never looked in the mirror and was venomous to my own soul."

Arden said it was health issues -- diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol run in her family -- that led to her own recent weight loss of fifty pounds in a year and a half. She took the weight off through an improved diet -- eating more than one meal a day for starters -- and running six to seven kilometres daily. But Arden doesn't kid herself that it will be permanent.

"I may have all this weight put on next year," said Arden. "My mother told me to hang on to my damn pants. And I could very well be (back at my original weight). I'm going to be so many different versions of myself before I jump into the grave and I'm going to like every one of them. I'm not going to wake up and be my own enemy. I've got enough of them out there."

Turns out the inclusion of the anti-war tune, Bring The Boys Home (originally recorded in 1971 to oppose the Vietnam War) on Uncover Me, has angered some of Arden's fans and non-fans.

She said she did set out to make "a little bit" of a political statement.

"Not too sure about what we're fighting about and what we're doing," said Arden of Canadians fighting in Afghanistan. "On one hand, you're really proud. The Canadian Forces have always been such a beautiful statement as far rebuilding countries and helping people and being in a defensive position. But I still feel like we let other people do our dirty work. I just don't like that soldiers dying in Afghanistan are regulated to the 19th page of the news now. Maybe I'm just fed up. But I can't stand seeing their names appear. I feel so bad for their families. There'll never be the same. What do you do? 'Oh, they die off so we'll just keep sending more over there?' For how long? So yeah, I did want to say something."