Jessica Simpson has revealed the severe struggle with self-esteem she endured during the early days of her career, admitting she “never felt good enough,” per music-news.com
The 45-year-old pop icon turned country star opened up about the immense pressure of the music industry in a video shared at the Foxwoods Resort Casino.
“My whole music career, you know I had a job, and it was to be a pop star and I tried,” she said. “But I will say when you’re younger, you just never feel good enough, and it’s okay to not feel good enough.”
Simpson, who recently split from her husband Eric Johnson, encouraged others to be gentle with themselves. “I want everyone to have grace for themselves when they just don’t feel good enough sometimes,” she added, before noting her personal method of overcoming such moments: “I’m very good at convincing myself that my purpose is bigger than the moment that I’m in.”
The star revealed that she has worked through her insecurities over the last few months. During a “really hard time,” she explained, she had to “surrender myself to my intuition, to the light that was in front of me and just focus on that.”
Simpson is currently enjoying a major musical comeback with her latest release, the self-produced country album Nashville Canyon Part I and II. She views this return to the recording studio as deeply personal and authentic.
“Coming back to music is coming back home to myself,” the singer stated earlier this year. “And maybe, for the first time, [I’m coming back] in the way that I feel I deserve.”
She contrasted her current creative freedom with the constraints of her pop past. “Back in the day as a pop star, you could sing an R&B song, but I wasn’t allowed to write [one]. It didn’t feel authentic to who I was, but I had a job to do,” she explained.
“Even if that job was highly competitive, it taught me a lot. My purpose had to stay intact, or I would’ve been taken down. Nothing was ever good enough.”
To produce the new record, she said she “had to go back. I had to rediscover the child.”
