Jessica Simpson is opening up about sobriety and songwriting.
In a cover story with sister Ashlee Simpson for The Cut, the “With You” singer spoke about songwriting and how drinking impacts the process.
Jessica said that in 2016-2017, she was writing in Los Angeles “with some of the biggest hitmakers.” She explained, “I have songs from those times that I never released because they just didn’t feel like me. Every time I would write, I was a little afraid of myself. It was almost too much, especially because I was drinking at the time.”
“But once I gave up the alcohol, the fears just diminished,” Jessica, 44, continued. “They went away.”
The mother-of-three said once she stopped drinking, it became “so much easier for me to access myself artistically.” “I’d thought the more I drank, the more cool I could be and find cool words that would rhyme, that wouldn’t be so expected. I overthought it when I drank.”
Jessica Simpson in Los Angeles in February 2024.
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty
She found it “more empowering” once she took alcohol out of the songwriting process. “I started pulling out my old journals, which eventually became Open Book. I now realize the power of words put to music.”
Jessica has been sober since 2017. She celebrated her seven-year anniversary of sobriety in November. She would go on to write music in Nashville.
The singer is releasing an EP titled Nashville Canyon Part 1 on March 21 and will be dropping the single “Use My Heart Against Me” on Feb. 21.
“I’d wake up in the morning and write down poetry, lucid dreaming style,” she told us exclusivelyin February about working on the album, “and then bring that to the songwriting sessions.”
For “Use My Heart Against Me,” Jessica said she “woke up with that lyric in my head.” “It’s kind of craving someone that you want again and you don’t care if your heart is used against you – if it’s just for one night. Like, give it over, just for the experience again.”
Jessica Simpson and Ashlee Simpson in Los Angeles in February 2024.
Jesse Grant/Getty
Jessica’s sister Ashlee, 40, recently gave PEOPLE an update on Jessica’s music, calling her upcoming EP “delicious and yummy and honest.”
“I think the most important thing about being ready to strip your layers and be where you’re at and meet yourself musically and as an artist, she’s doing that and I’m very proud of her,” she said in February.
