“The Best Thing I've Ever Done - Other Than Having My Children!”: Jessica Simpson Discusses Her Move into Country Music at 2025 MTV VMAs
By Maxim Mower
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Hot on the heels of dropping her celebrated two-part project, Nashville Canyon, Jessica Simpson has reflected on the experience making a foray into the country scene.
Simpson, who first started gracing our airwaves in the late ‘90s as a teen-pop sensation with hits such as ‘I Wanna Love You Forever’, was speaking with Billboard on the Red Carpet at the MTV VMAs in New York last night (Sunday, September 7th).
Simpson began by warmly gushing, “I am so good. I feel very blessed to be here. I can't believe I'm at the VMAs again at 45, like, I took a long break....!”, before shedding some light on the creative process behind her recent EPs, “Nashville Canyon is literally the best thing I've ever done - other than having my children!...It's the first music I've put out that I've had full control over creatively, and so it's kind of genre-less. It's just everything that I love - and I've never done a record where it's all live music. So doing that was important to me”.
The Texas native expanded by joking, “I'm like, ‘Why have I not been in a band my whole life?’ It's so organic for me. I was always used to having just headphones and the track and then it just being me - so it's a lot less lonely when you have a band. But being in Nashville, it really grounded me and really centred me, and it brought out the artistry and who I am - and it connected me with that”.
When asked about returning to the silver screen following her much-loved role in the 2005 film, The Dukes of Hazzard, Simpson teased an appearance in a forthcoming TV series, All's Fair, “I would love to be on the big screen...I just started thinking about music last year, and I did it. So I feel like [movies] could be on the horizon. Why not? I just shot something, a TV show that is coming. I'm on an episode with Ryan Murphy, who produced it. It's called All's Fair. It's very cool”.
There's undoubtedly a sense of sincerity and vulnerability that underpins both Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 of Nashville Canyon, with Simpson stripping away the cushioning, pop-leaning sound of her earlier material in favour of sparser, rawer instrumentation.
With the latter half arriving just a days prior to the MTV VMAs, and featuring fan-favourites such as ‘Hopeless Romance’ and ‘Fade’, we're hoping there are more country-inspired releases - and potentially even collaborations - on the horizon from Simpson.
For more on the 2025 MTV VMAs, see below:
