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In this week’s PEOPLE, Jessica Simpson reveals how she reclaimed her voice while making her new EP Nashville Canyon: Part 1. Not only in the sound of her five sultry rockabilly tunes but also in the clarity that came with being alcohol-free since 2017.
“The moment I started drinking too much was when I started writing music in 2016 and it was making me go to places and feel sorry for myself,” she says. “I don’t know why I wanted to feel sorry for myself other than the alcohol was lying to me and saying, ‘You’re braver because you can say this with me on your side.'”
“It’s not true,” says Simpson, now 44, who celebrated her seven-year anniversary of sobriety in November. “I actually am so much more honest without alcohol, and I actually believe myself so much more without alcohol.”
Rather than helping her get in touch with her emotions, she says, “I personally feel like it made my emotions quiet. Instead of addressing them, dealing with them and getting through it, I was just letting them be.”
Much has happened in the last seven years since she gave up alcohol. In January, she announced her split from her husband of 10 years, Eric Johnson with whom she shares three kids, Maxwell, 12, Ace, 11, and Birdie, 5. And, Simpson relearned to make music her way by returning to her Nashville roots.
There, she worked with songwriters and shared her journals and poetry to create her very personal new tunes. That also meant breaking free from the pop star system that catapulted her to fame two decades ago.
“You have a lot of people pushing and pulling at you, and putting money into you, and you say ‘Yes,'” she recalls. “I’m obedient. I’m a preacher’s daughter. I didn’t stand up for myself. I had a big voice but I didn’t have a voice that people would listen to when I would speak.”
Simpson continues, “Probably through all of Nashville Canyon, I came in with: forget who they told you to be. That was the manufactured version of myself. Remember the person that opened her mouth and sang Amazing Grace for the first time. Remember that girl and remember that as a woman — and to have freedom in music, that’s what you’re going to hear in Nashville Canyon.”
For more from Jessica Simpson, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere now.
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