“I can’t share this with you,” I said. “Singing together was what I did with Nick.”
He looked down and sighed. I tried to continue. “I don’t know what to do, I—”
I started to cry, feeling like a failure. Maybe I was. I ran. Literally ran out of the studio, taking huge gulps of night air when I got to the sidewalk. After the quiet of the sealed recording studio, New York felt loud. The sound of traffic moving and trucks turning was like the steady crash of waves, sirens here and there. A couple walked toward me and I coughed to put my head down and my hair in my face. I didn’t want to be Jessica Simpson right then. I went to my hotel to hide.
I sat on the bed. I hadn’t shown up in the studio—not for John, but for me. I didn’t know why. I was starting to realize John was someone I could focus my anxiety upon. My pain walking around in skinny pants and a cool scarf. No, I’d let myself and my song down. It could have had a new life, and I let drinking get in the way. I let my fears get in the way. I used my drinking to cover my fears. I realized it in that moment, and I let it pass. Owning my faults is an easy thing for me. Learning from those realizations and breaking the cycle of making the same choices, that’s the work.
John never discussed it. Not once. He broke up with me again soon after. I was twenty-six, the world at my fingertips, and I let the cycle continue through the summer. I took him as my date to the Met Gala, and then he broke up with me. At the Cannes film festival in May, I promoted my upcoming military comedy, then called Major Movie Star, but eventually released as Private Valentine. It was a princess moment, and maybe he saw the pictures of me at Cannes, because suddenly he was in love with me again. In Miami, I got to sit next to my mom as we showed at our first Mercedes Benz fashion week. I lost track of if we were back on or not then. Of even if we were ever really on at that point. I was having these incredible experiences, and I allowed him to steal my joy.
At the beginning of the fall, I was alone again. This time I was off the John merry-go-round long enough to catch my breath and stop being the ideal woman he had in his mind. I had room again to have a conversation with myself. You’re the only one who has the power to be the best you, I thought. Nobody else can do that for you.
You may have had that lonely conversation with yourself by now, but if you haven’t, let me tell you. You can have people encourage you and talk to you all day long about your potential, but if you’re not there, ready and willing to be that for yourself, you’ll never be fulfilled. For me, I wouldn’t know myself until I faced my fear of singing again. I had to walk through that fear. I needed to write again, get back in the studio, do what I loved. My first call was to my manager—my dad—and the next was to the friend I knew I couldn’t do without.
CaCee picked up on the third ring, sounding concerned. I didn’t blame her. She was now doing A&R at Sony, fulfilling the dream she started with in Teresa’s office. I told her my plan before I lost my nerve. “So, will you do A&R on the record?” That was the Artists and Repertoire creative work of helping choose songs, just as her old boss Teresa had done for me in the beginning.
She was quiet on the other end, and finally said, “I don’t know, Jess.”
“What don’t you know?”
“If it doesn’t go well, you’ll blame me,” CaCee said.
“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna go well,” I joked, “so let’s just do it. At least I’ll have my best friend.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I love you,” I said. I hung up, thrilled.
Now I had to do it.
19
Return of the Southern Girl
Winter 2007
We drove through a nondescript neighborhood of Nashville, convinced we had our directions wrong. But we kept going, making one turn, then another until we got to the address. Finally, we arrived at a corner lot surrounded by politely low stucco walls.
CaCee pressed the button at a low-key gate. A pleasant voice answered.
“Good morning,” CaCee said. “We have an appointment with Dolly.”
The doors opened, and once we saw the building it all made sense. There was a beautiful stucco-and-timber compound with red tiles, and at its center, there was a mission-style chapel right out of an Old West movie. It even had a little dome with a bell inside and a cross on top. This, of course, was Dolly Parton’s office and rehearsal studio.
Dolly and her kindness were the inspiration for me to come to Nashville to do a country album. As soon as CaCee, my assistant Adrienne, and I got settled in our rental house, one of CaCee’s first suggestions was that I call Dolly about the possibility of working together. I was afraid to call the number Dolly gave me after the Kennedy Center, so I made CaCee call Dolly’s manager, Danny Nozell, who was so lovely to her. Dolly called me right away and told me to come on in. She did her business work between four a.m. and ten a.m. At seven o’clock, we were her second meeting of the day.
“Jess, are you shaking?” CaCee asked me.
“I’m just nervous is all,” I said.
As soon as we walked in, there she was yelling, “Hey!” She hugged me like we were reuniting after a long absence. There are people who embrace themselves so fully and live so authentically that you feel like you grew up with them. That’s Dolly.
She immediately started showing us around, and the first stop was the chapel, a tiny little candlelit place that reminds you of those rooms tucked away in hospitals for prayer or quiet reflection. A place where anybody can come and feel at home, no matter what you believe in. She lit a candle for us, and we all prayed together. Dolly put me at such ease.
From there she took my hand to lead me to her office. She sat behind a desk and CaCee and I sat on pretty chairs. She put her hands together and looked at us. This was Dolly the businesswoman. My heart swelled, and I thought, This is how you build a career like hers.
I talked about my goals for the album, and she nodded. How I wanted to get back to singing from the heart, not to sing to sell records but to make people feel. I was aware that I was a pop star coming to the country world, and I wanted to be respectful of that. I said that it would be an honor to write with her.
“Yeah, I’d love to,” she said, “but I’d like to send you some songs, too, that I think you might like.”
“Please!” I said. “That would be amazing.” I couldn’t imagine being so talented that you had good songs that you hadn’t gotten around to recording yet. But this was the woman who wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” on the very same day, so it made sense. We went into her rehearsal space, and she played us songs to get a feel for what I could do. CaCee and I sat on a beat-up leather couch, luxuriating in her voice as she worked to get the songs right. When it was over, she gave me a bunch of demos to bring home. And a big hug to keep with me.
“I’m glad you’re doing this,” she said. “You are just so sweet and precious.”
I put my hand on my heart and teared up. When the door closed behind us, CaCee and I looked at each other like we’d seen heaven. We were still shaking our heads when we got in the car.
“It is so powerful for your idols to actually be who you thought they were,” I said. “I can’t believe she even met with me.”
“Of course she did, Jess,” CaCee said. “She loves you. People like Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson, they don’t need a single thing from you. They’re nice to you because they want to be.”
“I don’t know why, though,” I said.
CaCee looked at me a long time. “You’re just a beat-up little bird, aren’t you?”
I nodded, and we drove back to our home away from home. That night I was still flying from my time with Dolly. I didn’t know what awaited me in Nashville. The tabloids were already sneering about me going country like it was a gimmick, but so far everyone I’d met in town had been kind to the new kid.
The new kid. I had been that so many times when my family moved around, and that’s why I always sat with the lonely kids at lunch. I knew w
hat it was like. CaCee was right: Dolly and Willie were so kind because they didn’t need anything material from anybody. They had it to give, and they’d sit with me.
I WAS IN NASHVILLE AT A TIME THAT IT FELT LIKE IF I RAISED MY HEAD TO DO anything in the public eye, someone had a peashooter pointed at me. I had started dating a nice, normal guy, Tony Romo, the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, around Thanksgiving, and even that was something for people to pick apart.
Tony had seen my dad out a lot for about a year and had asked to be introduced. I always told my dad no, that I wasn’t interested in athletes. “I’m a musician girl,” I said. I believed that I could only date people who could relate to me because they were in the business. Which I guess was my code for, “I like emotional torture and fixing dark people.” But I was watching ESPN one day at my parents’ house, vegging on the couch, and they did a little interview with Tony. They asked him something like, “Who’s your dream girl?”
He answered, without a beat, “Jessica Simpson.”
My dad laughed. “Told ya,” he said.
I thought about it for a minute. I liked his smile, and he seemed nice. What if I went off script and took a break from the dark and twisted?
“Dad, call him,” I said. “Tell him I’ll see him.”
We met in secret and hit it off. A few days later, our families both watched him win a Thanksgiving Day home game, then all had dinner together at our hotel restaurant. He sat next to me, and near the end of dinner, he started giving me puppy dog eyes, kind of leaning in like he was willing his lips to mine.
“Are you seriously trying to have our first kiss in front of all these people?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said.
Is this what real dating was? You simply went for it? “Well, try it,” I said, to him and to me.
We had a very chaste kiss and it felt right. We went public quickly, which was also new for me. It was easy. He had no interest in drama. He said the Lord’s Prayer every night before bed. A solid person who was the kind of guy that, as a kid, I imagined marrying.
Because we were so public from the beginning, I was very proud when he invited me to the December 16 home game against the Philadelphia Eagles. It was a Sunday, and close to a hundred thousand of football’s true believers all filed into the sacred church of Texas Stadium for the 4:15 game. The biggest thrill for me was that I got to bring my grandparents to sit with me. Nana and Papaw kept looking around, amazed at it all.
The Cowboys had a 12-2 record but had just had a lousy game the week prior. This was a chance for redemption. I proudly wore a pink version of Tony’s jersey with his number nine on the front, and there I was, cheering on my guy. Annnd he proceeded to play the worst game of his career. It was bad from the start, and when the camera showed me huge up there on the screen, people found the reason. Why was this guy, who just signed a six-year, 67.5-million-dollar deal, playing so poorly? It must be the blonde in the bleachers.
“Send Jessica home!” the chant began. “Send Jessica home!” I couldn’t quite make it out at first, because it didn’t occur to me that anybody would be giving me a role in how the Cowboys were playing. If I didn’t hit a note at a concert, the audience wouldn’t start screaming at Tony to get the heck out of the arena. My Nana and Papaw understood what was happening, some protective instinct kicking in as their beloved Cowboys booed their granddaughter.
“Don’t you listen to them,” Nana said. I became mortified that this was happening in front of them.
Can I just tell you how much I knew about football? What it’s like to be a coach’s granddaughter growing up in Texas? When there were four minutes and nineteen seconds left in the game, Eagles running back Brian Westbrook got the ball and gained twenty-four yards before suddenly taking a knee just inside the one-yard line; everyone around me thought he was hurt. Did I? Nope, I knew what he was up to. Dallas had no more time-outs. If he actually scored the touchdown, we might get the ball back, and if we got the ball back, we might at least go out fighting. No, he wanted us to suffer. He took a knee three more times, letting the clock bleed out. It was insult added to injury, a humiliating 10–6 loss.
And, somehow, it was my fault.
“Jinx” was the word everyone used. The media was cruel, and even Tony’s teammate Terrell Owens talked about me to the press. “Right now, Jessica Simpson is not a fan favorite,” he said, “in this locker room or in Texas Stadium.” He also helpfully added that the last time Tony played close to this bad was the year before, when he had dated Carrie Underwood. T.O. later apologized and I held no grudge, but people had a new villain. They printed huge photos of me and made giant popsicle sticks of my head to taunt Tony with at every single game. People dressed like me and acted stupid in the crowd. I didn’t want that kind of power. I found myself having to assure people that I wanted the Cowboys to win.
Perhaps sensing I was vulnerable, John inserted himself into the national conversation about me, because why not? He posted an open letter to Cowboy fans on his blog, telling them “That girl loves Texas more than you know. It’s one of her most defining traits as a person. So please don’t try and take that away from her.” When Lauren, my publicist, called to tell me what he did, I threw the phone on the couch like it was the boogeyman.
I figured Tony would get sick of people calling me a jinx and tell them to knock it off. He was constantly interviewed on the sidelines or at postgame press conferences. He could just look the camera in the eye and tell people that he was responsible for his performance, and to leave his girlfriend alone.
I waited.
UNWELCOME AT MY BOYFRIEND’S GAMES, I WAS FREE TO FOCUS ON MY work in Nashville and see him when we both were off. It was what I needed. I got to work with the best people, including my producers Brett James, who wrote Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” and John Shanks, who’d worked with Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Kelly Clarkson, and a cool girl named Ashlee Simpson. At my writing sessions, I would bring my notes from journals and even old emails from snuffed-out flames. Like Dolly had, musicians and songwriters in Nashville accepted me, making me feel like I belonged. I loved hearing about their journeys, how they would just write a song and then bring it to the famous Bluebird Cafe to test it out for an audience.
Artistically, that winter was a magical time for me, but it was extremely taxing emotionally. It helped that I was in a good relationship with Tony, despite the apparent football jinx, which allowed me to write happy songs like “Come on Over” and “You’re My Sunday.” But there was also a reckoning with my weaknesses and the pain I’d experienced. The daily writing sessions were like therapy, tearful and raw. Doing songwriting, I felt nekkid in front of fluorescent lights. Adrienne and CaCee would come and get me, and I’d get in the car all talked out. At the house, I wouldn’t even take off my heavy ski jacket. I marched into the kitchen, pulled down a bottle, usually Ketel One, and sat at a little desk. Night after night, I sat at my laptop, going down Google rabbit holes or Skyping with Tony. I kept the bottle next to me, drinking until I’d take the edge off all those bubbling emotions and kept going until I couldn’t even feel the smoothness of simple thought. I was just a body, needing to rest until my brain kicked in again for the next writing session.
CaCee had never seen me like this, and Adrienne didn’t want to play nursemaid. It was scary. They started marking the liquor bottles to keep track of my drinking. This went on for some time, until Adrienne confronted me. I closed the door on her, and later I let her think I was too drunk to remember that she said I needed to stop drinking so much. But I remembered. It was only recently, when we talked about that time in Nashville, that I told her I could recall everything she had said. A lot of people, even when they’re out of control, have an ability to control others. Your anxiety and your addiction team up like viruses that need to grow in the host body. You train other people to work around them, to keep their peace.
I told myself that this was an extreme time, and sure enough, once I was d
one songwriting, I didn’t need that crutch of alcohol so much. There was something about getting close to all that truth that my mind couldn’t handle. It was another early warning sign of what would come, but again I ignored it.
By the time I got to the recording sessions, I had worked through so much that it was the most comfortable I’d ever felt singing in a studio. I did three songs the very first day, and when we did that last cut, I thanked myself for walking through the fear. I cowrote all but three of the songs on the album and decided on Dolly’s song late in the game. It was called “Do You Know” and I loved it so much I wanted it to be the title of the whole album. It was one of the last I recorded and I sent the finished version over to get her blessing. I wasn’t about to mess up a Dolly song.
She loved it so much she asked if I would be interested in doing it as a duet. “I think our voices would sound good together.”
“Yes,” was my answer. If I did nothing else with my career, Dolly Parton wanted to sing with me. One of the many benefits of the Jessica Simpson Collection taking off was that I could make the music I wanted. I no longer needed a label to dictate my every move. I could offer it to people, and if it provided a soundtrack to one of their decisions or put words to something they couldn’t quite get ahold of, that’s why I did it. I did it for me, and I did it for them.
When Do You Know came out in September, it hit number one on Billboard’s country chart. I went just about everywhere to promote the album, and it was nice to be able to be less guarded with the press. I had a simple life with a nice guy, and if people asked about my marriage or John, I could easily sidestep the questions.
I didn’t have to do much to promote Major Movie Star, which went almost straight to DVD as Private Valentine. Before it came out, I held a special screening of the film and a concert for troops stationed at Camp Buehring, an Army base in the northwestern desert of Kuwait. It was about twenty-five miles from the Iraqi border, a stopping point for many troops on the way to their deployment. A threshold between their life at home and a life at war in the desert.
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