Dallas-Raised Singer Jessica Simpson Channels Heartbreak for New Nashville Canyon EP

Jessica Simpson is stepping back into the spotlight.

The Abilene-born, Dallas-raised and Waco-raised singer and actress last released a studio album — Happy Christmas, her second seasonally themed project — in 2010.

Now, amid a tumultuous divorce from her second husband, former NFL player Eric Johnson, the 44-year-old is once again embracing music after a profitable detour into fashion design and raising her three children.

Simpson, who released six new songs to accompany her 2020 memoir Open Book, is now gearing up to release Nashville Canyon, Part 1 on March 21, her first original music since that project five years ago. Her last studio album of original music was 2008's country-tinged Do You Know, nearly two decades ago.

The first two Canyon singles released — “Use My Heart Against Me” and “Leave” — hint at a raw, vulnerable new direction for Simpson, who split from her husband at the beginning of 2025: “Oh I want you to leave/I don’t even wanna breathe the air you breathe,” she sings, in part on “Leave.”

The five-track Canyon got a public preview during the just-concluded South by Southwest festival in Austin. On March 12, Simpson performed during the Recording Academy's Block Party at Owen Bradley Park, her first live concert performance in 15 years.

"This time I needed to remember who I was and why I wanted to sing in the first place and all the music that inspires me," Simpson said from the stage on March 12, according to Billboard. "And I need to forget who they told me to be."

Simpson also turned up the next night, March 13, in a surprise appearance at Willie Nelson’s annual Luck Reunion at his Luck Ranch, just outside of Austin. (Simpson aficionados will recall, in addition to being fellow Texans, she appeared alongside Nelson 20 years ago in the peculiar Dukes of Hazzard reboot, which starred Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville.)

“I was out in Nashville, and I had my heart wide open,” Simpson said during her Luck Reunion set, according to multiple reports. “I was in a very intuitive state, and I had to ask some very personal questions on the home front. I found out that my world had been turned upside down and that life was very different. I am now a very single lady.”

Those scoffing at Simpson’s re-entry to music and her embrace of an Americana-inclined sound and style might want to lower their raised eyebrows just a bit, particularly given that JD McPherson, critically acclaimed guitarist and singer-songwriter, is credited as the producer of Simpson’s forthcoming EP.

“I’m not sure where to start,” McPherson wrote on Facebook on Feb. 24. “I’ll just say producing this project for Jess has been one of the most rewarding and F-U-N experiences making music I’ve ever had. I’m very proud to be a part of this story, a story of someone courageously seizing control of their life, agency and creative output.”

Whether this EP is a prelude to Simpson's full-fledged musical comeback or simply creative catharsis in the wake of life-altering heartbreak remains to be seen, but for now, the one-time reality TV star is fully focused on using her art to heal herself.

“When we open our hearts, sometimes we’re vulnerable and it just gets broken,” Simpson said during her SXSW appearance, per multiple reports. “Maybe sometimes we forget that we’ve been broken for a really long time, but when we meet ourselves, when we write, when we sing [and] when we connect with ourselves, we find all the answers.”