Citation :Kellie Pickler's new album reveals growing pains
BY CINDY WATTS • STAFF WRITER • September 28, 2008
Buzz up! It's been two years since Kellie Pickler released her debut album, Small Town Girl, to country music fans. And in that time, defiant-yet-vulnerable radio hits like "Red High Heels" and "I Wonder" have ratcheted sales to almost 800,000 copies.
But today Pickler isn't the same naive North Carolina girl she was in 2006, when, at 19, she was thrust into the spotlight as a finalist on American Idol. She's grown up. And, she says, like it or not, many of the songs on her new self-titled sophomore album — due in stores Tuesday — reflect that growth.
"It's weird going from someone no one really knew or cared about to all of a sudden everyone wants to know everything about you," she explains. "It is a little different growing up in the public eye during that transition from teenager to woman. And some people don't want you to change; they want you to stay the same forever. But you can't. You wake up every day a little bit changed."
Pickler spent the past two years writing and searching for songs for the album that embody who she is as a person and an artist. She'd a write a song, think that it was destined for the project and then write or find an even better one.
"It's not only been so therapeutic, but such a learning journey of finding out who I am through the making of this album," she says. "I know Kellie Pickler better."
In the end, Pickler co-wrote five of the 10 cuts on the album, but she said the outside songs she selected also closely mimic her life.
"All the songs are very personal as far as (being) about different things I've been through for the past two years," she says. "I've been in different relationships and experienced different heartache and disappointment as well as happiness and acceptance. . . . The heartbreak songs are a thing of the past. I'm not in that period of my life right now, but I was there and I know what it feels like. They are all me, they are all pieces of a puzzle to my life."
That's not to say she actually went to her ex's wedding and threw rocks instead of rice, like the third song on her new album suggests. She wrote "Rocks Instead of Rice" with Josh Kear and Chris Tompkins, and Pickler says the song was Kear's idea.
"I was (ticked) off about this guy I used to date," she says. "We had a bad breakup and some stuff was still taking place, and I was so angry with him. It was funny because Josh walked into the room, told me he had an idea about going to a wedding and throwing rocks instead of rice. I go, 'Oh my God, that's so where I'm at right now.' It was good to make light of a sad situation."
But it's the deeply personal "Somebody To Love Me" of which Pickler is most proud. The song was born from a distraught late-night e-mail the singer sent to friend and fellow songwriter Aimee Mayo. Pickler said on the surface she had "everything," but that she was so lonely she was crying herself to sleep at night. She closed the note with, "I just want somebody to love me." And even though it was 3 a.m. when Pickler sent it, Mayo wrote back and said, "We have to write that."
"I think 'Somebody To Love Me' and 'One Last Time' are the best songs I've ever written," Pickler says. "And I don't think I'll ever write a song better than those. I went through a really dark period in my life. My career was going great, but everything in my personal life was crumbling. I was insecure and I think it's crazy sometimes, the people you want to love you the most don't. I have so many people who love and support me — friends, fans and the people I work with. That's great. But there are other people who are absent from my life whose love I long for. And on a relationship standpoint, it's sad when you are in a relationship and you're lonelier than you are when you're not in a relationship. I would rather be lonely and alone than with someone and alone."
Pickler says the last two years have also taught her about "filtering" the people she lets into her life. She looks at every relationship and asks herself if that person makes her a better person. If the answer is no, she lets them go. And since her ascent into the spotlight, it's gotten increasingly hard to find people with which to surround herself.
"I really only have one friend," she says. "I have my childhood friend from home, and she comes out to Nashville and stays with me and goes on the road with me. She's the only person I trust wholeheartedly as far as friends go, and I would rather have one great friend than 100 so-so friends."
Starting Tuesday, Pickler isn't going to have much time for her best friend or anyone else. She's launching her new album from The Today Show in New York City and hitting the television talk show circuit in promotion of the disc. Then she's going on tour with Sugarland this fall, she wants to do another USO Tour and she's hosting segments of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest. It's the latter event that most rattles the young singer.
"I started spazzing out the other night thinking about it," she says. "Part of me is like, 'I wanna back out because I'm scared.' "
But more than anything, Pickler just hopes the next two years will be as rewarding, career-wise, as the last two have been.
"My No. 1 goal is this album, and I just pray that it does well and is successful," she says. "I just pray my music is still climbing in two years."
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